I Came A Long Way To See You
by SekritOMG
Summary: A rough couple of weeks in the competitive South Park antiques market. For Foodstamp's contest. Stan/Kyle. Craig/Tweek.
1. Chapter 1

All right, guys, here's another entry for that contest you've all heard so much about.

Now, here are some notes about it.

Yes, it's a one-shot. This site wouldn't let me post it in one chapter, so I had to split it. But technically, from a _literary_ standpoint (man, I'm a douche), it's a single story. Really. I know, it's long. Really.

It wouldn't let me fit the entire title, either, which happens to be _I Came A Long Way To See You, Now I Wish You Were Dead_. Yes, that's the song from that GTA IV commercial. I just kept listening to it while writing this, and it began to stick, and I didn't have a better title anyhow. Oh, and it kind of works.

I also finally figured out to shun all dollar signs. Yeah.

I really hope you like this.

* * *

South Park tourism was anchored on the downtown strip, a block of 1930s storefronts with chintzy boutique businesses and coffee shops. There was a post office, a toy store, and, for some reason, an outpatient rhinoplasty clinic. Less suspect were a pair of antiques stores — a regular staple of the rural American town. Despite the similar premise, however, stores A and B were about as different as they were overpriced. One was only accessible by buzzer, and a sign on the door bore the following: _Opening Hours Tues.-Thurs., noon-4 p.m. or by appointment. _Cosmopolitan travelers through town would press their noses against the window to get a glimpse of startling 90-degree angles and overblown glass forms in tangerine and aquamarine, curling around themselves on stark marble coffee tables. Unfortunately, a nose pressed up to the glass would usually leave an unsightly smudge, which had the effect of sending the shop owner into something approaching a blind rage.

And if scaring away formerly potential customers by going apeshit on them was bad for business, well, Craig didn't really give a crap about that. He was the sort of man who catered to the sort of customers who were fonder of mid-century modernism (anti-kitsch, Craig would say) than they were of their own dignity. If the man selling them this Barcelona chair was howling at them to get their fucking hands off of the Red Wing, it must only have been because he was just so dedicated, so passionate, about his trade. And besides — what Craig lost in sales thanks to his temper, he generally made up at the espresso bar in the back.

Craig had a second source of income — he was a landlord. Thanks in part to his miraculous forethought during a real estate downturn a couple of decades back, he was the proud owner of not only his own store, but the retail space inhabited by the town's second antiques shop. (He also owned the apartment he inhabited, but he was loath to call this space his own, since he cohabitated with someone, a blond man with a tenuous grasp on his own stability, who happened to go fittingly by the name Tweek.)

Said second antiques store was a travesty by Craig's account; a pitiful excuse for a business largely cluttered with chintz and doilies and strange, glassy-eyed dolls. Mint-green velveteen sofas dripping in golden trim butted up against someone's grandmother's rolled-up Oriental rug, which was half-leaning and half-laying on a dressmaker's dummy, probably rescued from some old dressmaker's estate sale or worse yet, the alley behind the dry cleaners. Often Craig would catch Tweek pressing his nose against the glass of _this_ store, and he would pause for a moment as the shopkeepers would give both of them friendly waves before getting back to whatever it was they'd been doing, going through Life magazines or scratching one another's backs or something. With each neighborly wave, Tweek would begin to return the gesture, and then Craig would give his tenants the finger before grabbing his skinny companion and dragging him back into _their_ store. And on the way, while Tweek halfheartedly kicked in objection, Craig would glower at the charming wooden plaque attached proudly to the door: _Kyle Broflovski and Stanley Marsh, proprietors_.

XXX

On a Thursday evening, Mr. Broflovski and Mr. Marsh were sitting down to dinner in their dining room with Mr. Marsh's parents. The elder Marshes, Randy and Sharon, were privileged to have an open Thursday night invitation to their son's house. Stan and Kyle shared the belief that nothing was more important to either of them than family — and that included each other. After 40 years of friendship — and something like two and a half decades of 'courting,' as Stan's mother would coyly put it — it barely registered that they were not actually family by way of any technically definition. No, this was family of their own making, and in theory Kyle was more than happy to have his in-laws over.

He was a complicated man, Kyle Broflovski. He was not particularly interested in antiques, but when Stan had grinningly owned up to harboring a curious fascination with old junk, Kyle was there to support him. In the interest of making things happen, Kyle procured an MBA, which helped him master the technical and financial aspects of owning an entire shop full of old junk. And Stan went to work immersing himself in the daunting yet fulfilling world of antiques appraisal. Despite his complete disinterest in the subject, Kyle found something he loved in this business — a joint project. Something they could nurture together. Indeed, this was a sore spot in their relationship, and in the middle years — the middle years being relative to where they were now, not the projected ending — they had tried to fill the gap. Or rather, Kyle had tried, bringing home a string of unsuccessful plants and, when that went bust, pets. It turned out that cats set off Stan's asthma, and Kyle did not want to keep the schnauzer because it "didn't respect" him, a concept Stan found inherently laughable. For a few years there was a betta in the picture, but eventually he died, and all Stan and Kyle were left with, once again, was each other and their antiques business.

Furthermore, there was the small problem of Stan's father. It bothered Kyle, really and truly, that he never seemed to acknowledge their relationship. Sometimes he really felt the guy had no idea, and at other times he felt it must be denial. Randy saw Kyle as Stan's roommate, best friend, and business partner — and, well, he wasn't incorrect; Kyle was all of those things. But he was he felt this was missing the important part of the story — and he was becoming slowly but surely enraged with Randy Marsh's bizarre inability to see it. So as he served Stan's mother some green beans, he gritted his teeth and tried to tolerate Stan's father's ridiculous rambling.

"I don't know, Stan," he was saying, poking at his pork chop. "I'm beginning to think there's more to your relationship than you let on."

"Well, Dad," Stan replied through a mouthful of stuffing. "There is."

"I mean, I liked a lot of the guys I worked with, but I never moved in with any of them."

Stan's mother just rolled her eyes at this. "Would you please pass the gravy?" she asked her son.

"Sure," Stan said sheepishly. Kyle gave him a warning look as he sat down and preciously folded his napkin into his lap. Stan handed the gravy boat to his mother, and returned Kyle's look with his best, _I know, but what am I supposed to do?_ expression.

"People are going to start thinking you guys are a little…" Randy thought for a moment. "You know, closer than you should be."

"Okay," Stan agreed. "They can think that. We _want_ them to think that."

"Please tell me," Kyle said mock-pleasantly, his fork of green beans in mid-air, "How close do you _think_ we should be?" He took bite of green bean. "Mr. Marsh," he added through his full mouth as a sign of cursory respect he didn't really have.

"Well, I don't know. You ever think instead of sharing a bedroom and having a guest room, you guys should maybe just … have separate rooms?"

"Oh, Jesus, Randy," Sharon sighed, rubbing her temples. "Must we go through this every week?"

"No," Stan said. "Dad, we like sharing a room. We love each other. In a lot of ways."

"Oh, Jesus," Sharon repeated. "Stanley, do you have any wine?"

"Yeah," Stan said slowly. "White or red?"

"Both."

"Yeah." Stan got up from the table, but not before wiping his mouth with his napkin. "Excuse me," he said softly.

Randy pressed on. "I mean, I can appreciate good, platonic, manly love." He directed these words to Kyle, who almost immediately wanted to just grab the other man by the collar and shake him and scream in his face, _We're homosexuals, godammit!_ But he was slightly too polite to do this — although not by much, really. "It's like, what are you going to do if Stan decides to get married?"

"I don't know," Kyle said, intrigued by something all of a sudden. "I guess we'd have a wedding."

"Right." Randy nodded. "But where would you go? Would you get your own place?"

"I am not going anywhere, Mr. Marsh," Kyle said sternly.

"It's kinda weird for a married guy to be living with his buddy." Randy paused. "But no weirder than a couple of bachelors living together, I guess," he added.

This was when Stan returned from the kitchen, with a bottle of de-corked chardonnay and a glass for his mother. "Here you go, Mom," he said warmly, setting these things down in front of her.

"Took you long enough," Sharon mumbled, going straight for the bottle.

"Stan," Kyle sighed. "Your father wants to know what would happen if we got married."

"To other people," Randy clarified.

"No one's getting married," Stan said definitively, seating himself again.

"But what if you finally meet the right person?" Randy pressed.

"He did," Kyle insisted.

"Yeah," Stan agreed. He smiled and reached for Kyle's hand. "Look, Dad. We have each other, okay? That's all we need. No one's getting married, or moving into the guest room. No one's moving out. This is our house."

"Okay, so you're a committed ladies' man," Randy conceded. "What about you, Kyle? Don't you want to meet a nice girl and settle down?"

"No."

"But how do you know for sure until you've met someone?" Hearing this, Kyle whined softly, and put his head in his hands, elbows on the table, narrowly avoiding knocking over the salt, which Stan quickly grabbed and moved.

"Randy," Sharon seethed, fingernails clicking on the surface of her wine glass. "Can we please not talk about this anymore?"

"I'm just wondering, is all," Randy said pathetically.

"Well, I don't think the boys want to be having this conversation." She sniffed, and then added, "again."

"Is it just me, or is it hot in here?" Stan asked, fanning himself a bit too demonstratively. "And how about those Nuggets, huh?"

"Just drop it, Stan," Kyle ordered.

"You guys fight like you're married," Randy observed. "But then, I guess that's what happens when you live together for so long. I used to time my roommates' showers when I was in college."

"Did you also used to fuck them in the ass?" Kyle asked.

Stan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose and uttered, "Make it stop." His mother's hand shot out for the wine bottle.

"Actually," Randy said brightly, "I did, once." He paused. "Oh, wait. That was my roommate Esteban's girlfriend. Sorry, I thought she was living with us at the time, but she wasn't."

Kyle finished the meal with his head in his hands, pondering whether he was trying to stop himself from laughing or crying or both.

XXX

"It's been _years_, Stan," Kyle hissed as the door slammed behind him, mere moments after Stan's parents' departure.

"Has it?" Stan asked, voice somewhat ringing with trepidation. "Wow. The time goes so fast when you're spending it with someone you love and think is spectacular and you want to take them to bed right now." Stan put his hands together in mock devotion, appealing to the god of Kyle's sex drive, wherever he or she was at the moment.

"Yeah right," Kyle snorted. "Like I could possibly maintain an erection after _that _pathetic excuse for a family dinner."

"Oh, you're just saying that," Stan scoffed. "Give me three, no, _two_ minutes, and I'll prove you wrong."

Kyle crossed his arms and leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. He was half-hoping Stan would make good on his word, but he shook it off to continue his berating. "It's been 25 years, Stan," he growled. "I've had to deal with you fucking father treating me like I'm just some goddamned roommate for 25 years."

"Yeah," Stan agreed, now focusing on trying to side-step this argument altogether. "You are so right about that."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"Me? I have nothing to do with it!"

"I'm sick of being treated like a second-class citizen in my own house!" Kyle screeched abruptly.

Stan frowned at this assessment. "Oh, second-class citizen, that's rich. I'm the one who has to spend my life amid your horrible late-1980s decor because you're too goddamn cheap to redecorate."

"Oh, wah wah _wah_, Stan. Do you want to spend your retirement in South Beach, or do you want to spend it in some sleazy old people home in the middle of rural fucking Colorado because you couldn't stand the fact that I put lavender Corian in the kitchen?"

At the mention of the sore subject that was the lavender Corian, Stan really cracked. "It's hideous! It's hideous and you're hideous and I hate you sometimes, _I just fucking hate you_!" Kyle uncrossed his arms, and his face fell. No longer angry, he slumped and shuffled into the living room and plopped down into a chair. "Oh, God," Stan sighed. He followed him, realizing his mistake. "Kyle, I'm so sorry."

Kyle rubbed his eyes. "You think I'm hideous?" he sniffed.

"Oh, no, no — Kyle, you're the most attractive person I know."

"That is such a lie. I know you secretly want George Clooney, Stan. I know you don't make me sit through those _ER_ reruns because you enjoy medical drama."

"Well, maybe a little," Stan admitted. "But I don't _know_ him. You're the most beautiful person I _know_, Kyle, really."

"Well, is that really saying so much in South Park?"

Stan thought for a minute. "Yes. For a tiny mountain town where no one knows how to dress themselves, an outsized number of people here are remarkably attractive."

"And I'm the most attractive?"

"Yeah."

"Even though I have a big, ugly Jew nose?"

"Especially because you have a big, ugly Jew nose."

"You mean it?" Kyle pressed.

"With every fiber of my being," Stan confirmed. "And I feel bad about my dad, Kyle, I really do. But what do you want from me?"

Kyle rubbed at his nose. "Well," he began thoughtfully. "For one thing, I want you to come out to him."

"Okay," Stan said slowly. "I understand that. But we've been living together for 23 years, Kyle. You were my date to my sister's wedding. Hell, you walked down the aisle with me. We were holding _hands_. He's seen us kiss and, um, _cuddle_, and fucking _slow dance_. I know I never sat down with him and said, 'Daddy, I'm gay, do you still love me?" but the fact is, well, it's not like I'm hiding it." Kyle just rolled his eyes. "I mean, for god sakes, Kyle, I run an antiques shop!"

"So he's an idiot. I don't care. I'm sick of him thinking that I'm your bachelor roommate, and I'm going to move out when one of us gets married."

"Well, what do you want me to _do_, then?"

"I want you to tell him you're gay with me, Stan!"

"I need more specifics."

"Okay, fine. You want more specifics? Here is what you can do, specifically. One, ask your mother to make dinner on Sunday night. Two, bring me to dinner. Three, after dinner, sit down in the living room with me and your parents and in no uncertain terms say, 'Daddy, I'm gay, and Kyle is my husband, and I love him very much.' "

Stan sighed, and uncrossed his legs. "All right, fine, I can do that," he conceded. "But there's one problem with your plan."

"And what would that be?"

Stan clasped his hands together. "You're not my husband. We're not _married_."

Kyle's expression soured again. "Well, maybe you need to fix that."

"What? Aw, come on!"

"No, Stan. This is something I want."

"Can't this end like our other fights, and we just skip to the makeup sex?"

"No! I want a wedding!"

"Okay, that's great, but someone's going to have to pay for it, and I don't want to spend that money because we need it to buy our shop from Craig!"

"My parents will pay for it!"

"Oh, that's just swell, you just think of everything," Stan grumbled. "The answer is no, Kyle. I can't control my dad, and I'm not having a wedding. If you can't take my love for what it is, then maybe you don't deserve it."

"When do I get what I want?" Kyle asked miserably. "Honestly, all I ever wanted was a pretty little house with pretty little children and a little extra money so that when I got too old for the mountains I could move to Florida like my parents and be with my husband. Is that so much to ask, Stan?"

Stan thought for a moment. He gestured to the couch. "Come here," he said gently.

"No." Kyle pouted, and crossed his arms again.

"Come on, Kyle."

"No, I'm pissed at you!"

"Aw, come on. Come sit next to me."

Kyle slumped his shoulders, and sighed. He got up from his chair and sat down next to Stan on the couch. He felt an arm go around his shoulders, and Stan pulled him in sort of close. "I know this isn't exactly what you wanted," Stan said calmly. "Well, it's not what I wanted, either. You think I wanted to still be paying Craig rent every month? Of course not. I thought I would own my own shop by the time I was 41."

"Sometimes I wish we could just close the fucking store."

"Well, I don't want that, either. We've put our lives into this business. I know some people have children, but we have an antiques shop."

Kyle felt Stan's chest rising and falling with his head pressed up against it. He let Stan grab one of his hands. "But I want babies," he said pitifully. "I want to be just like everyone else. I want to have what they have."

He searched for words, but Stan found none. He did what he could manage, which was try to be reassuring, tactile, breathe steadily and avoid making sudden movements. He wondered, once again, why Kyle had to worry about the future so often, leaving him alone to focus on the quiet moments that stitched their relationship together.

XXX

Kyle and Stan had a five-year lease on their shop. While Stan generally kept important dates in his head, Kyle meticulously scribbled little notes in the agenda he kept in the top drawer to the right of the sink in the kitchen. Each month, he used black block print to write out the message RENT DUE. (He scribbled notes about MORTGAGE DUE and OPTOMETRIST-STAN and DAD'S BIRTHDAY in different colors.) At the end of this month, however, instead of RENT DUE, he had scrawled SIGN NEW LEASE. And indeed, with their lease coming up for renewal in a mere two weeks, Kyle was beginning to wonder where Craig was, and why he had yet to turn up with their paperwork.

On Friday afternoon, Stan was talking on the phone to a customer with a question about cleaning the surface of an old table while Kyle worked in the back. While he generally pretended to feel rather put-upon by these greenhorns with their lame questions, Stan actually felt quite proud of himself for having some information other people might just be interested in hearing. "I'd just try dusting it first," he suggested. "Maybe go over it with a damp rag. Can you use a paper towel? I mean, I guess so. I usually don't." He paused when he heard the bells on the shop door tinkle. "Can I call you back?" he asked politely. "Someone just walked in."

Peering around an ornate bookcase, Stan saw that, at long last, Craig had come to discuss the renewal of the lease. "Great," he heard someone say behind him, and he realized that Kyle had emerged from behind his stack of receipts to see what was going on. He knew little to nothing about antiques or, for that matter, sales, so he generally didn't do anything when a customer came in. But Stan had noticed that Kyle was becoming very antsy about this business with their landlord, wondering what kind of increase if any there would be in their rent, and so on. "Wait," Kyle breathed, clutching at Stan's hand. "What the hell is he doing?"

Instead of any forms, Craig was holding a short, black leash. And on the end of that leash, looking particularly terrified, was Tweek.

"I don't know," Stan admitted.

Craig was looking around, impatient, and Tweek was just standing there, holding himself, shaking. That was pretty much all Tweek did — in their experience with the guy, Stan and Kyle found him to be a walking personification of the nervous system, all synapses and no grace whatsoever. He had ear-length blond hair and pale skin and sunken eyes. He was prone to looking eternally frightened. They'd known him at school obviously. They'd spent some time hanging out with him, in fact — but that was a long time ago, and 30 years had gone by. They saw him around, mostly trailing Craig wherever he went, flinching and gasping at each order Craig barked to him. It never seemed like a great romance, but to Stan and Kyle, anything that failed to mimic their own relationship made no sense.

"What the fuck kind of weird S-and-M game are they playing now?" Kyle asked. Stan has no answer. He was studying what Craig was wearing: cut-off jean shorts and a wife-beater, both of which were appropriately tight, flattering nicely developed muscles. Oddly enough, in the eternal winter wonderland that was South Park, Craig somehow managed to remain perpetually golden, like he'd just gotten back from Morocco or somewhere. (Morocco was the furthest away Stan could imagine ever going, both figuratively and literally.) Craig wore his black hair short, shorter than Tweek's. But all of this was unremarkable, considering his shoe situation.

"I don't know," Stan replied. "Tell me, is he wearing flip-flops?"

"I think so."

"It's 25 degrees out!" Stan marveled. "What is wrong with that guy?"

"Don't know," Kyle whispered. He smacked Stan on the ass, for no particular reason. "Hi, Craig," he said calmly, stepping out into the open of the shop. "How are you?"

"I'm fine." Craig announced this as if there were any more than two people in this space, like it was a bulletin from the front lines. "Never been better."

"Oh, that's wonderful." Stan flinched at these words, because they sounded syrupy sweet — it was so un-Kyle-like that no matter how many times he heard it, Stan felt he would remain perpetually unused to this misplaced, overly familiar and yet completely plastic business tone of voice.

Without returning any inquiries about Kyle's health, Craig just asked, "Where's the other one?"

"I'm here," Stan announced, stepping out into the shop. "Hey, Craig. What's up?"

"You were hiding behind a bookcase," Craig said, unimpressed. Not knowing what to say to this, Stan just gave a goofy smile and put an arm around Kyle's shoulder. Upon seeing this, Tweek tried to step backward, to conceal himself behind Craig, but he was unable to, because Craig stopped him.

"Say hello, Tweek," Craig said merrily, tugging on the leash and forcing Tweek to step forward and speak to Kyle and Stan.

"Hello," Tweek managed.

"Hi," Kyle said uncomfortably.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Stan asked, eyes bulging.

"A little," Tweek admitted. Craig tugged his leash again. "Ow!" Craig smirked in satisfaction.

"He likes it," Craig asserted. "Don't you, baby?" Tweek nodded vigorously.

"I think you're hurting him," Stan said meekly.

Craig sighed, and scowled. "Tweek's wellbeing is none of your concern."

Kyle clicked his tongue. "Of course not."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Stan asked.

Tweek looked at Craig, who pursed his lips. "He's fine. Don't look at him. Pay attention to me."

"Do you…" Kyle began cautiously. "Do you want to talk about the lease?"

"Yes," Craig answered simply. "Let's do that." He walked over to a sofa by the window and seated himself. Tweek looked around nervously, but at least there was enough slack in his leash to allow him to stand upright. Craig answered Tweek's uncertain expression by pointing at the floor, and indeed, Stan and Kyle were amazed to see Tweek get on floor by Craig's nearly naked feet.

"You're currently paying what, exactly?" Craig asked. His thick legs were spread out so that both Stan and Kyle, who were standing in front of him (forming a tableau not unlike a couple of low-ranking vassals appealing to their monarch), both got an ample view of what was going on down there. Kyle had to stop himself from continuing to admiringly ogle; Stan just tensed his lips and gave Craig what he hoped was his blankest poker stare. "Hello?" Craig asked again. "I'm waiting."

"Uh," Kyle said slowly, still somewhat distracted, "like a thousand dollars a month."

"Do you think that's fair?" Craig asked.

"Sure," Stan said aimlessly, although he shut his mouth when Kyle shot him a threatening _let me handle this_ glare.

"Well, I…" Kyle began, but he looked down to Craig's crotch again to see that Tweek was now, well, pawing at his thighs.

"What is it?" he asked, bending over to pet Tweek's hair lovingly, like he was tending to a cherished pet.

"It's starting to chafe," Tweek whined, tugging at his collar. "Oh my God, get it off me."

"Oh, you don't like it anymore?"

"Gah, no! Get it off me!"

"Okay," Craig agreed. He began to undo the buckle on the black collar Tweek was wearing. "Does that feel better?" he asked.

"Yes! Thank you!"

Craig thought for a moment. "Maybe you should go sit in the shop until I'm done here."

"You mean it?" Tweek asked.

"Yeah." Craig bent forward and fumbled around in his back pocket; with his attention on Tweek and digging around back there, Kyle had a moment to finish his inspection, which earned him a soft slap from Stan, who mouthed the word _stop_ soundlessly.

Blushing, Kyle returned the gesture and mouthed back,_ spoilsport_.

Craig finally fished something out of his pocket, and he handed it to Tweek with an encouraging, "Here."

"You're giving me the key to the store?" Tweek asked, beaming.

"Don't do anything crazy," was Craig's only reply. "Just go in there and lock the door behind you and sit down on the floor and _don't touch anything_ and wait for me to get back, like a good boy."

With a dramatic seize Tweek pushed himself up off the floor and the sweet bells that Stan had tied around the doorknob with a velvet ribbon rang as he left. This noise always seemed to make Craig shudder, and he visibly had to pry his disgust away from the door, back to Stan and Kyle, to whom he delivered his words imperiously.

"I'm raising your rent to 10,000 dollars a month."

Stan immediately grabbed Kyle's hand, impulsively, unthinkingly. Kyle just gaped, and then he managed, "Excuse me?" in a hushed tone.

"Ten thousand a month," Craig repeated. "Seems unfair, I know, but it's a small strip, there isn't a lot of retail opportunity."

"But … that much? Are you kidding?" Kyle asked.

"Well, you know how it is, the economy's practically in the fucking gutter. I import most of my stuff from Berlin or Barcelona, and the euro is _killing_ me."

"Well, don't blame _me_," Kyle scoffed. "I didn't vote for him."

"Neither did I," Stan added.

"You didn't vote for anyone, Stan."

"I voted for there not to be a 12-hour line at the polling place."

"Okay, both of you," Craig sighed in a very belabored fashion. "Both of you, shut up. I don't care which one of you votes or which one of you tops or which one of you knows how to fucking do the tango. All I want is 10,000 dollars a month. Understand?"

Kyle nodded dejectedly. Stan pointed at Kyle and whispered, "bottom," which earned him another smack across the face. "That wasn't very nice," Stan muttered.

"Oh, we'll see how nice it is when _no one's _bottoming for you, you closeted non-voting sweater vest-wearing goy."

"Oh my _god_," Craig moaned. "Will both of you just _shut up_ already?"

Kyle began cautiously. "Look, Craig." He paused. "Listen. We can't _really_ afford this. I mean, we'd have to start making at least that much every month in net profit to make it up and, well, as I'm sure you're aware, the antiques business isn't what it used to be."

"I know," Craig said wisely. "That's why I have a second option for you."

"Oh," Stan said stupidly, feeling left out.

"Let's hear _that_," Kyle suggested.

"A one-time, 100,000-dollar buy-out fee." Craig paused. "I retain full rights to your brand, I have the prerogative to close this store, and I insist on a non-compete clause preventing the two of you from ever working in the antiques trade in the state of Colorado ever again."

Stan and Kyle both stared at Craig dumbly, waiting for him to do something like pull out one of those New Year's Ever champagne popper noise-makers and scream "Just kidding!" and then hug both of them, although they both knew deep down that all three of these things were about as unlikely as Stan's father grasping the concept of his son's sexuality.

"Craig," Stan said slowly, his voice absurdly low, hitching on the name. "This store is our life. It's … it's _ours_. It's what we have together."

"Well then," Craig said smartly. "Don't sell."

"We don't have that kind of _money_," Kyle repeated, more clearly this time.

"I know. That's why I'm offering you a sum of money to disappear completely."

"But what good does that do you?" Stan asked. "I mean, if the antiques business is so fucking bad, why pay out like that?"

"Because," Craig said. "I know you can't raise the money to keep the store, and you're going to need to take the fee. I'm going to dissolve your business, and I have an interested party willing to pay me in excess of the pittance I'm offering you two for this property." Craig coughed. "So this really works out great for me on all fronts. One, the money. Two, I get to finally be rid of you boring, second-rate excuses for faggots forever. Three, I no longer have to suffer the humiliation of coexisting in the same market as your tired recreation of my dead grandmother's front parlor." He paused. "Which was the cutesy thing she always called her living room."

"How dare you?" Kyle asked, face red.

"You don't like our store?" Stan stammered.

"Face it, guys," Craig said knowingly. "Your aesthetics are just like your sex life: boring, trite, and over 20 year ago."

"I resent that!" Kyle cried, pointing at Craig.

"Resent it all you want," Craig said. "Any man who can spend eight hours a day in this sad little excuse for Grandma's parlor has no dick."

"That's not true," Stan countered. "We both have penises, Craig, and just because we only show them to each other doesn't mean we don't use them just as well as you do."

"Yeah," Kyle agreed. "At least we have what you'll never have."

"What and what would that be?"

"A good, solid relationship built on shared hopes and dreams and _trust_," Kyle said in a very self-satisfied way.

"Oh," Craig said loudly. "Isn't that sweet? I thought you were going to say 'The deed to the shop,' and I was about to be like, 'No, I have _that_.' "

"Godammit Craig!" Kyle shouted in response. "Shut up!"

"There's no need to get angry," Stan said softly, yanking Kyle by the back of his shirt.

"Yes there is!" Kyle replied, although he calmed back down anyway.

Craig was looking tense and annoyed, and he crossed his solid, hairy legs and cracked his knuckles. "I could care less what you guys do in the bedroom," he said. "Although I'm sure your lovemaking is as sweet as it is vanilla, I'm not here to mock your sad little simulacra of heteronormative relationships. This space isn't for sale. Either you let me buy you out, or you cough up the extra nine grand a month."

"Well, you're fucking us either way," Stan said. "I don't see why you can't just be a pal for once."

Craig rose, and picked his shorts out of the crack of his ass. Kyle stuck his tongue out in disapproval, but he managed to get it away before Craig saw. "Cry about it," he said. "Your lease is up in two weeks." He gave them a goodbye finger. "See you suckers around," he said sweetly. The bells on the door jangled when he exited; it slammed shut behind him.

Kyle and Stan looked at one another, both at a loss for words. "Damn," Stan finally breathed. "What a cunt that guy is."

"Yeah," Kyle agreed. "And people think _I'm _a money-grubbing Jew."

"It's not just the money," Stan pointed out. "He hates us. He really hates us."

"What'd we ever do to him?"

Stan just shrugged in reply.

XXX

Stan and Kyle had a single employee. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, Butters Stotch got up at 7 a.m. and had a bowl of raisin bran before hopping on his Schwinn Orange Krate and pedaling into town to open up the shop. Butters made a paltry 7 dollars an hour, and even though this was really stretching Kyle's meticulous budget, he felt that really, having the weekend off was worth 98. Stan was bothered by the idea that a 40-year-old man would want to hang around an antiques store on the weekends, especially when said man was actually a rather respectable elementary school teacher, who made a fine living supporting himself and his pet rabbit. "Oh, whatever," Kyle would say dismissively. "It's _Butters_. Who cares."

"We should at least be paying him more money," Stan would suggest.

"Tell me one thing, Stan. Do you want to want to make a profit, or do you just want to throw all of our money away and live on the street like matchgirls?"

"Make a profit. But honestly, we should pay him a little more. He's worth more than 7 dollars an hour."

"Well, he seems perfectly happy being fiscally raped," Kyle would conclude, and it was true. They had this conversation each quarter, and they always determined that Butters, well, Butters just liked antiques. Or maybe he liked the calm, serene, fussy sort of vibe the shop exuded. He was that kind of guy, after all. He looked something like an asexual academic type, with his tapered khakis and loafers and stupid little sweaters. Stan still thought the most humiliating moment of his life was the day he walked into the store to drop off some vintage cookbooks, only to realize that he and Butters were wearing the same exact sweater. Oh, they were different colors, all right, but it still wasn't lost on Stan, who donated the offending garment to goodwill.

In light of Craig's ultimatum, Kyle stayed up throughout most of the evening going through his books. And around 1 a.m. he reached the conclusion that they really only had one insanely useless expense. So that was why he was also up at 7 a.m., smacking Stan in the face with a pillow.

"Get up, lazy," he chided.

"Wha?" Stan asked hazily, yawning. He looked at the clock. "It's early," he concluded, rolling over.

"Get up, Stan. If you want to keep this store you have to get up." So Stan got up, and being very tired he tried to put his left shoe on his right foot. Still, he managed to sleepwalk into the store behind Kyle, at around 9:15 a.m. and they were immediately greeted by their employee.

"Good morning, fellas," Butters enthused, too chipper.

"Butters, you're fired."

Butters just gawked at Kyle. "Oh, no," he moaned. "I didn't do anything, honest."

"You didn't do anything, Butters," Kyle intoned, and Stan really thought he could hear an air of regret in Kyle's statement. "But we really can't afford to pay you anymore."

"Oh dear," Butters continued. "What'll my parents think?"

"You parents?" Stan asked.

"Yeah, who cares about them?" Kyle added.

"All right, fine, who cares about them. But what about Lillian? What'll she think?"

"I'm sure she'll…" Kyle began, but he interrupted himself. "Wait a minute. Butters, who's Lillian?"

"Why," Butters sniffed. "She's my girlfriend."

Stan and Kyle were dumbfounded. "You have a girlfriend?" Stan asked uneasily.

"Yeah," Butters said.

"Where the hell did you get a girlfriend?" Stan wanted to know.

"She works at the school with me. She's the librarian."

"You're dating the school librarian," Kyle said.

"Yeah. And she loves this store. She was so impressed when I told her I got a job here. She comes in every Sunday afternoon, and we…" Butters trailed off. "We like it here," he concluded shyly.

"You what?" Kyle asked, seriously not knowing.

"You … oh, my god," Stan choked. "Sick, dude! Butters, you can't do that in the store!"

"I know," Butters sighed. "We don't do anything too rough."

"Excuse me." Stan grabbed onto a pedestal ashtray to steady himself. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Are you okay?" Butters asked.

"Here." Kyle took Stan by the elbow and led him to a sofa near the window. "Shhh, Stan. Deep breaths."

"Butters…girlfriend…in my _store_…"

"I know, Stan. Shhh, don't think about Butters. The Pacific Northwest, Stan. Think about pine trees."

"Ugh," Stan groaned. "I can't deal with this. First Craig, and now Butters … oh my _god_. What the _fuck_?"

Butters just stood there, watching this. "What'd Craig do?" he asked uneasily.

"I can't even talk about it," Stan said dismissively.

"He wants to either raise our rent, or buy us out," Kyle stated simply.

"So, you guys gonna pay the rent?"

Kyle sighed as he continued to pat Stan on the back reassuringly. "We can't afford it."

"So, you're gonna sell him the business?"

"Hell no!" Stan shouted, and then he flinched. "He can have this business over my dead body. Oh, Jesus, I think I'm getting a headache."

"So technically, Butters, you're not being fired. You're being laid off." Kyle thought for a moment. "You might be eligible for some kind of unemployment."

"Eh, I don't think so," Butters said with a shrug. "And even then, I don't need it. I mean, I'm fine, I got my job at the school. And if Lill and I get hitched, then we'll have two incomes."

"You're thinking about getting married?" Kyle asked, always interested in this subject.

"Oh, no," Stan moaned. "Butters, please do me a favor and never, ever talk to Kyle about marriage."

"Well, why not?"

"Because he wants to drive me crazy."

"All right, Stan, you know what?" Kyle let go of Stan's shoulders, and crossed his arms. He turned away from the other man on the couch and stared at the wall. "You can just rub your own back from now on."

"Fine with me, I didn't want you rubbing my back anyway."

"Fine, then I won't anymore."

"Okay, fine," Stan concluded.

"Are you guys okay?" Butters asked.

"Fine," Stan and Kyle answered at the same time.

XXX

After Butters left, a woman from Denver came in looking for a pair of candlesticks, but she left when she realized that there was a 'better' antiques store down the block. This thoroughly upset both Kyle and Stan, and they sat together miserably on the couch, reminiscing about the good old days, although neither of them could remember when that was — it was something of an intangible concept, like having an open relationship. They _thought_ that maybe it existed, and maybe some people had participated, but it was probably just a myth and even if it wasn't, it probably wasn't as good as they were imagining it to be.

By the time their conversation was turning really esoteric, an elderly gentleman came into the store, and he left two hours later (after engaging Stan in a frighteningly long conversation about the aforementioned good old days) with a ceramic statuette of a collie.

"At least we made a sale," Stan said cheerfully.

Kyle, as usual, rained on his parade. "Yeah, and that dog cost us 20 bucks when we got it at that estate sale, and we sold it for 75. So if you think about it, it wouldn't even have covered Butters' pay for the weekend."

"Well, look at it this way: Butters is no longer working here."

"I _know_." Kyle fell back down on the sofa, where Stan was already seated with a 19th-century copy of the Bible that somebody had brought in the other day. "He has a girlfriend. I had no idea."

"Well, it's about time," Stan grumbled. "I just wish he hadn't done it in my store."

"But, I mean, a _girlfriend_?" Kyle pressed.

"What? You thought he was gay or something?"

"Kinda."

Stan snorted. "You think everyone is gay."

"Have you ever even _looked_ at him?"

"Well, no, not too closely, but, come on. Butters is the straightest person I've ever met in my life. In fact, he's so straight, he doesn't even realize when he's doing something sexually questionable."

"Look, Stan. He has a _rabbit_."

"And if he were gay, he'd have a _Pomeranian_."

Kyle scowled, and gave Stan the finger. Stan just laughed at him and went back to flipping through the book in his lap. "What are we gonna do?" Kyle asked again. "Do you realize we have two weeks to figure this out?"

"I don't know, Kyle. Finance is your bag. What do you _want_ to do?"

"Well, we don't have a lot of ways to cut expenditures. I suppose we could cut back on our buying."

"That's fine with me." Stan shrugged, and closed the Bible he was studying, and then laid it on the coffee table in front of him, pushing over a glass candy dish to make room. "Most of the crap people bring in isn't worth anything anyway."

"The problem with this business is, when it's good, it's great." Kyle sighed. "But you have to spend too much money to make big sales. We could stop buying so much stock … we fired Butters … I don't know if there's another way to cut down our expenses."

"I really don't want to close this business, Kyle. It's like … well, it's like our baby or something."

"See, Stan? This is what I've been saying all along. If Craig came in here and offered us 200 grand for our child, we could have him arrested. But it's perfectly fine to do it with our antiques store."

"Yeah, but we can get rid of an antiques store if we can't afford it," Stan pointed out. "If we had a kid and it became a burden, we'd just be stuck with it."

"Well, what do you want to do, Stan?"

Stan answered immediately, and very seriously. "I don't want to give up my business. Or _this_ store. All I have is this, and you."

"Oh, I'm so glad I'm runner-up in your heart to this second-hand junk box."

"Shut up, Kyle. "

"Well, you might get lucky." Kyle saw Stan make a face, and he groaned. "No, not like that. Who are you, Butters? Pay attention. What I'm saying is, it's not like we can move."

"Well? Why not?"

"I've looked into it. Craig's right — there _isn't_ any retail space available."

"None?"

"Well, I mean, there's some over by that Indian burial ground."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound great."

"Plus, you know, it's not 100,000 dollars flat-out. There _is_ such a thing as tax."

"You know," Stan said very calmly, "I may not have a business degree from a fourth-tier community college, but I do know what tax is. I mean, I am an adult."

"Sometimes, I wonder."

"Thank you."

It was at moments like these that Kyle wished he had some kind of hobby, something that would occupy his hands during the weird little gaps in conversation he and Stan frequently found themselves staring down. The reason he'd never taken up anything was simply that he would never be able to live down the embarrassingly clichéd humiliation of being caught knitting — or, worse yet, needlepoint. In fact, every year for Christmas since they bought their house, Butters had given Stan and Kyle a sampler. With unspeaking shared glances they questioned where got them, or if he made them himself. They hung them in the laundry room, and never asked Butters about it. They preferred not knowing.

XXX

It seemed that 5 p.m. did not come quickly enough. Kyle did not particularly like antiques, and while he did not really mind or _dis_like them, either, it was not so easy to sit in relative silence, with no math to do, while Stan performed his endless amount of inventory, appraisal, and so on. So much of selling was talking someone into making a purchase, and Stan prided himself on his ability to talk himself into sales. Moreover, Stan actually enjoyed this. He appreciated old things, where they came from, what artistic merit they had, who made them, what they said about cultures foreign and eras past. This was in contrast to Kyle, to whom the only thing antiques said were "ka-ching," and if they didn't say that, they weren't worth talking about. He had learned some things along the way — he was bright, after all, but really, his opinions on sitting in a room full of ticking clocks and glinting candelabras were hugely influenced by his feelings for Stan. And at this moment, his feelings for Stan were not at an all-time high.

He came home feeling bitter; Stan came home feeling dejected, for even he was not happy about dealing with Craig, the fact that he might lose his store, having to fire his old friend, the only man who shared his passion for the subject, or the idea of having no weekend at all for the foreseeable future. Tiredly, they both collapsed on the couch. Usually after a day of work, Stan liked to have a glass of wine and relax in front of the television. On the weekends, he and Kyle sometimes drove out to Denver for dinner, or to pretend for a few hours that they did not live in South Park. Stan was also a great fan of sex, and good days at work put him in a lascivious mood quite often. But it had not been a great day, and what was more, he was no longer a young man. He wasn't an old man, but he found himself at the point where he did not compulsively lust for physical attention every hour any longer. Kyle seemed to have _no_ desire to have any sex, or rather, he seemed to be using sex as a means of relationship facilitation, rather than a raw need that slowly wore away at his sensibilities. Apparently, this was just something that happened to the Broflovski men.

So Saturday night was here, for indeed it was dark out already, and Stan and Kyle both languished on the couch, feeling hurt and upset and drained for various reasons. "Is it raining?" Stan asked, wanting for a reason to hear Kyle's voice, to bolster his own weariness.

"Yeah," Kyle sighed. "What's for dinner?"

"Rain," Stan said sleepily. "Um, how do you feel about pizza?"

"Pizza's delicious. The problem is, we can't afford pizza."

"Oh, yeah. I agree."

Half an hour later, Stan brought in two bowls of farfalle with pink sauce. "How'd you make this?" Kyle probed, crawling out of the rhythmic cocoon that is a Saturday night _Upstairs, Downstairs_ marathon on PBS.

"I mixed the leftover marinara with that jar of alfredo my sister sent after Italy," Stan explained. The worst thing about it was, Shelly had apparently never heard of white sauce before her week in Florence, so instead of bringing them back a souvenir, she just went to the grocery store when she got back and bought them a jar of alfredo and shipped it with a note, _I tried this in Italy and thought you turds might appreciate some real Italian food_. Kyle rolled his eyes at this, but tried it anyway.

"I would have reduced some tomatoes in that chardonnay your mom didn't finish," he suggested.

"Yeah," Stan agreed. "She's really turning into a wino."

They ate slowly, glancing at each other and the television set and the clock. Someone, some washed-up actress, was pleading with them for funding for public broadcasting, and in thanks they would apparently receive some videotapes of _Upstairs, Downstairs_. "Who even owns a VCR now?" Kyle asked.

"I think someone tried to bring one in a couple of weeks ago," Stan recalled. "Actually, it was that Fosse guy."

"What ever happened to him?" Kyle wondered.

"Apparently, he still watches VHS."

Kyle was a slow eater, so Stan put his head on Kyle's shoulder while he continued to mechanically ingest single bowties. The doldrums of British voices were beginning to lull him to sleep, and it was only 7 o'clock, which was quite sad, when there came a pounding at the door, distinct from the rain.

"Door," Stan sighed.

"What now?" Kyle asked.

"Maybe it's Craig, out for revenge."

"Wouldn't that be us, seeking revenge on him?"

"Who knows," Stan yawned, bare toes digging into the carpet as he headed for the door. "Jesus," he sighed as he swung it open. "You can stop pounding now, I'm right…" he trailed off.

"Stan?" Kyle called from the other room. "Who is it?"

"..here," Stan finished.

"Hi," Tweek said morosely. His hair was shorter, and he seemed to be unusually quiet and still.

"Tweek…" Stan said slowly. "Hi." It was cold; through the screen door, Stan felt the chill of winter (or in this case, early spring) permeate the house. "Here," he offered, swinging the door open with an elastic snap. "Get in here."

Tweek hugged himself and shook rapidly as Stan shut the door.

"Godammit," Kyle shouted. "It's not actually Craig, is it?"

"Close," Stan said with a sniff, leading Tweek into the living room.

"Hello," Tweek said nicely, giving Kyle a sad little wave. "What's going on?"

"Um." Kyle bit a piece of pasta off of his fork, chewed it slowly, and swallowed. "Nothing much," he said thoughtfully. "Having dinner." He looked at Stan, who shrugged. "Where's Craig?"

"Gah!" Tweek spat, something more like the Tweek they knew, or at least kind of knew _of_. "I don't know where he is, and I don't care!"

"Well, he's probably looking for _you_," Kyle supposed.

"Maybe," Tweek admitted. He bit his lip and squinted his left eye. "I left him!" he said suddenly.

Stan put a hand to his throat, and Kyle smiled wryly. "Did you?" he asked. "Why, whatever for?"

"I can't take it anymore, man! It's so much fucking pressure! Every day it's like, Tweek, do this. Tweek, do that. Tweek, take these pills, they make you feel better. Tweek, don't touch my Warhol print. Tweek, don't touch the scissors. Tweek, don't cut all your hair off. I mean, oh Jesus! When does it end, man? When does it _end_?"

Stan pointed to the hair. "Looks good," he said.

Kyle put down his nearly finished bowl of pasta and crossed his legs. "So, no more Craig, huh?"

"No way!" Tweek shook both fists. "I gotta go back eventually."

"And why's that?" Kyle asked.

"All my clothes are there! Plus it's just, so, like … oh Jesus." Tweek put his head in his hands and sat down on the floor, making it wet. "I'm getting all dizzy."

"I see." Kyle got up and stepped over Tweek, and then he grabbed Stan by the sleeve of his red cable-knit V-neck. "Excuse us," he said politely, pulling Stan into the foyer.

"Bingo," he hissed, thin auburn eyebrows hopping up in jubilation.

"Yeah," Stan drawled slowly, looking over Kyle's shoulder to catch a glimpse of Tweek rocking back and forth on the floor. "I mean, _what_?"

"This is our chance, you fool!" Kyle said, a bit too excitedly for Stan's taste.

"Our chance to _what_, exactly?"

"Well, you know." Kyle paused. "This whole time, Craig's had something to hold over us."

"That's true," Stan agreed.

"So now, we have something to hold over _him_."

"Look," Stan said with a drawn-out sigh, slumping his shoulders. "Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe this is a sign that we should just, you know … close the store and get 9-to-5 jobs. Start putting real money into our IRAs."

"Stan, there are two kinds of people in this world."

"Really? Only two?"

Kyle ignored this. "There are people who get fucked over, and there are people who get to the top, not caring how many little baby toes they step on in the process. Now, do you want to be the first kind of person forever? Because I myself am getting pretty sick of it."

"All right. I give up." Stan kicked the carpet with his heel. "It's your project. I'm not getting involved"

Inhaling the air of what he was certain could only be confidence, Kyle rolled up the sleeves on his crisp black shirt and strode back into the living room.

"Hey, Tweek," he said in his most plastic, friendly voice. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Tweek lifted his head, and wiped his eyes, which were actually dry. "Really?" he asked. "Craig never wants to talk about it."

"No?" Kyle asked sympathetically. "Stan and I do a lot of talking."

"It's mostly Kyle," Stan filled in from the doorway.

Shaking his head at this, Kyle pressed ahead. "Communication is so important to a relationship."

"I know." Tweek began to chew on his bottom lip, which made him look extremely feral, which in turn made the living room floor look particularly dignified. "That's why I came to you guys."

"We're so flattered," Kyle lied.

"I mean, you guys are always so nice to each other," Tweek continued. "Sometimes I'm like, Jesus, Craig, why do I always have to be on the bottom? And he'll just be like, well, you like to bottom. And I'll be like, no, man, no! Even though I do like to, it's just not like he ever _asks_. What if I don't want to play doggy one day? What if I don't want to experiment with nipple clamps? No one ever asks me if I like being humiliated, everyone just assumes I do because — gah, oh my God, do you ever stop and think to yourself, oh my _God_, I'm an adult, why am I being led around like a dog through the town where everyone can _see_ me?"

"Can't say that I do," Stan mumbled.

"Oh dear." Kyle patted Tweek nervously on the shoulder, trying to prevent vomiting by any means necessary. "Yes, that sounds horrible. You _poor_ dear."

"And I walk by your store," Tweek continued sadly. "And I see how nice it is inside. I don't like sharp corners. They hurt when you walk into them. So Craig says, well, don't walk into them. But how can I stop? They're everywhere!"

Stan drawled, "That can be a real problem."

Tweek quieted down. "I just need a couple days apart from him," he said firmly. Kyle stuck his tongue partially out, and looked up at Stan, who very firmly, from the arching threshold that separated living room from foyer, shook his head and drew a finger across his neck and mouthed the word _no_.

"It's okay," Kyle said kindly, turning back to Tweek. "You can stay with us for as long as you want." He made sure to give Stan a defiant, evil smirk. Stan smacked his forehead, and pounded up the stairs. "Do you have clothes? Do you need a toothbrush?"

Kyle and Stan argued briefly, albeit not particularly seriously, in the bedroom when Kyle came up to get Tweek some nightclothes, mostly about whether Tweek couldn't just sleep on the couch, or if he really had to stay in the guest room. Kyle won. They went back to discussing attire.

"Well, he won't fit my pajamas." Stan indicated his two-piece blue, red, and brown plaid flannel pajamas, which for pajamas seemed to be absurdly well-fitted. Kyle thought they were hideous, and that they made Stan look like a child, despite the unsettlingly flattering cut. "Why don't you lend him something of yours?"

"He's tiny," Kyle said in reply, digging through his dresser. Kyle wore flimsy lounge pants to bed, if anything at all; he did not like to admit this, but he likedsleeping under five or six layers of blanket, preferably with Stan's warming torso wrapped around him.

For all his pretense, Stan figured Kyle needed to absorb just as much affection in his sleep as actual heat. But he was going back down to talk to Tweek tonight, so he was wearing a pair of lounge pants, with a robin's egg blue T-shirt that simply had "Provincetown" imprinted on the front. He had gotten it, of course, in Provincetown — which, of course, they had visited to go antiquing, and certainly not to attend any all-night predominantly homosexual dance parties, or anything like that.

Under all of this fabric, Kyle looked much larger than he was, and Stan enjoyed watching the jersey fabric of the pants stretch across his generous behind as he squatted to look through the dresser. "If I ever worked out I might know where all these junky T-shirts were," Kyle remarked. He pulled one out. "Do you think Tweek has any political ideologies that would conflict with this?" he asked, brandishing an olive IDF shirt.

"No," Stan said carefully. "But I bet Craig does."

"You think Craig is a Palestinian sympathizer?" Kyle asked.

"I don't know. I just think it's hot when you get all pissed off about Arabs."

Kyle got up on his feet, and tried to adjust his pants so that his junk wasn't visible, but it was no use. "I have to go back to Tweek," he said.

"Aw, come on." Stan patted the bed next to him. "He won't miss you for 10 minutes."

"No," Kyle said very obstinately, and then he was gone, leaving Stan to flop back on the bed and service himself.

XXX

Kyle made two mugs of tea, but he noticed after 15 minutes that Tweek hadn't touched his. He eyed it suspiciously, and pushed it away very slowly a couple of times, only to draw it back toward him, inspect it again, and decide he didn't like it yet another time. They mostly talked about Craig, and Kyle made sure to fuel whatever fires of dissatisfaction were already ignited in Tweek's mind. He didn't not have a clear picture of how encouraging Tweek to be further pissed at Craig was going to help his cause, but he had a feeling about it — a mean, nasty feeling that made his heart throb with the beat of control.

The biggest surprise was, Tweek was not a poor conversationalist. He had opinions — oh, did he have them. He did not seem to tire, and he did not seem to care for many things. His voice rang with a bell of suspicion, and he reminded Kyle of a toy dog that yelped a lot, and yet lapdogs were very popular due to their adorability and, Kyle had to admit, this frightening urge some people, himself included, apparently, had to stroke them back to calmness.

Kyle did not think Craig would like a lapdog. But just as Tweek was raving about something impolite Craig had done involving a space heater, a pair of handcuffs, and the backyard, Kyle decided that he didn't know what Craig would like at all, except that he seemed to like financial gains, and he absolutely _adored_ being in command. Yes, in fact, that was the theme of Tweek's complaints — the lack of his autonomy. Well, what was a lapdog but a little thing for rich people to commandeer?

"And do you know," Tweek continued, "that he introduces me to his relatives as 'my sex slave'?"

"Terrible," Kyle clucked. "You're not his sex slave."

"Actually, I am." Tweek began to tug at the bottom of his shirt like it was making him very itchy. "But that doesn't mean he has to introduce me like that!"

"I know what you mean. Stan always just calls me his boyfriend. Except when we're dealing with shop business, then it's 'my business partner' this and 'my business partner' that."

"What's wrong with that?" Tweek asked.

"We've been together for way longer than anyone else I know!" Kyle huffed indignantly. "Boyfriend? What a joke. A boyfriend is someone you've gone to the movies with a couple of times. I find it very insulting."

"He could call you his sex slave in front of his parents, so that they call you 'sex slave' too, and every time you walk into their house it's, 'Hello, sex slave, would you like some apple juice?' And the answer is yes, perhaps I would enjoy some apple juice, but Jesus fucking Christ, I have a name! I mean, it just makes me so … gah!" Tweek seemed to jump a little in his seat.

And the conversation continued on like this for quite some time. Kyle could hear in Tweek's voice the sort of weariness he felt in himself when he thought about Stan: distinct, real self-pity. But the difference between his relationship with Stan and this nightmare Craig/Tweek train wreck was that at the end of the day, Stan Marsh was a good man, a handsome man, a man you could bring with you to visit your parents in Sarasota. He would help babysit your nieces and nephews when you went to visit your brother for Passover. He would tirelessly and without fail make absolutely certain that at no time would he roll over and fall asleep before you too had experienced orgasm. He never forgot an anniversary, birthday, or Mother's Day.

But then Kyle thought about all the ways in which Stan was part of his family, and he began to get angry again. Because no matter how many Christmas mornings there were, no matter how many Easter egg hunts he went on with Stan's nephews, he wasn't a Marsh, and never would be one, and it was all that goddamn closeted asshole's fault. Still, there were those good things about him. They might not be making up for the bad things at the moment, but they existed. Kyle listened to every single word about the domineering Craig, and tried to figure out what, exactly, Tweek saw in him. At a point or two he was on the verge of asking, "So, what do you _like_ about Craig?" but then he rationalized that this would not help his cause at all, so he kept his commentary to sweet reassurances and "Mmhmm, girlfriend"-type rejoinders.

Right when Kyle was beginning to fall asleep in the middle of Tweek's complaining, and he was somnolently contemplating making another mug of tea, the doorbell rang.

"At this hour?" Kyle asked generally. "Really?"

"It's him!" Tweek cried, getting on his knees in his chair. "Don't answer it."

The doorbell chimed a second time, and soon after there followed some banging. Tweek hid his head in his hands, and Kyle got up and adjusted his shirt so that it kind of disguised his drowsy bulge. "No," Tweek said with a sob, clutching at Kyle's sleeve, but his plan, after all, was not meant for Tweek's betterment — he had a mission and a deadline. Tweek followed him around to the foyer, where Stan had also sleepily come downstairs.

"You think that's Craig?" Stan asked.

"I know it is!" Tweek replied hastily.

"Could be," Kyle said with an over-pronounced shrug.

Stan rubbed his eyes. "Let's just ignore him."

Tweek nodded along to this, rubbing his hands together and shivering.

Kyle gave them an apologetic smile, and threw open the door.

In his little booty shorts and sheer shirt, Craig bounded into the house. He was still wearing flip-flops, and Stan's eyes widened at this, because truly it was too cold out for flip-flops, no matter how erratic the weather was acting.

"What the fuck?" Craig growled with tangible impatience, twisting his sights from Stan to Kyle and back. He then spotted Tweek, who backed away, and Craig reached out for him. "Here you are," he said menacingly. "Just what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"I need a couple of days!" Tweek was shaking worse than Kyle and Stan had ever seen him shake. "I gotta do this!"

"So you run off to bunk up with these losers?"

"They're not losers! They're really nice!"

"What's the difference?" Craig asked, rolling his eyes.

"They don't dress me up in girls' clothes and make me dance for their poker buddies!"

"You liked it!"

"No way, man! I only liked it when it was you and me!"

"I don't understand, Tweek. What is your problem?"

"I don't know!" Tweek cried out. "Ah! Just leave me alone for a while!"

"Oh, is that what you want?" Craig asked, eyes narrowing.

"Maybe?" Tweek asked. "I don't know!"

"Really, Craig," Stan said sternly, finally breaking into this conversation. "Get out of our house."

Craig snorted. "Who do you think you _are_?" He sneered. "I own your pathetic little asses."

"Oh, really?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah," Stan chimed in. "This isn't our store, Craig. We own this house. Get the fuck out."

"I'll get the police involved!" Craig threatened, shaking a clichéd fist. "You're both kidnappers."

Kyle laughed at this. "We are _not_. Tweek is here on his own volition."

Tweek just made a sad, tense little sound after this.

"Besides," Stan added. "We have friends on the force. They'd never take your side over ours."

"Oh, you think that fat prick is going to protect you?"

"Yeah, actually," Stan said.

"He might hate us," Kyle began.

"And we might hate him," Stan interrupted.

"But he sure doesn't give a crap about you, Craig, that's for damn sure," Kyle finished.

"I'm not kidding!" Craig shouted. "You can't do this to a man! Tweek is _mine_, do you hear me? You can't take your fucked-up problems out on me, and you definitely can't take them out on _him_!"

"Good night, Craig," Stan said simply, shutting the door in his face and securing the bolt.

"Oh my _God_!" Tweek cried. He was hyperventilating, slightly. "What the hell!"

Kyle and Stan just stared at the door, which Craig was still banging on. They could hear him shouting things like "I'll get you" and "You can't do this" and "I'll teach you fuckers not to mess with me."

"How long is he going to do this for?" Kyle asked, stepping back. Stan put an arm around his waist.

"Oh, Jesus, probably all night. You made him really angry!"

"Eh, just forget about it," Stan suggested. "He'll get tired eventually."

Craig did not tire until 5:30 a.m.

XXX

In the morning — which really didn't feel like morning considering Craig had been out there slamming himself against the door until a couple of hours before they got up — Stan did what he usually did and came downstairs to make coffee. He found Tweek sitting at the kitchen table with a mug, and for a second he made the not-invalid assumption that _Tweek_ had gotten up and made coffee. "How's the coffee?" Stan asked, rubbing his eyes and going into the fridge for the cream cheese.

"I don't know," Tweek admitted.

"Okay." Stan grabbed a bagel from the pantry.

"I didn't make any."

"Oh." Stan stuck his bagel in the bagel-slicer.

"I don't know how." This caught Stan's attention.

"You don't know how to make coffee?" he asked.

"No."

"Do you _drink_ coffee?" Stan asked, not realizing what a stupid question it was. Tweek nodded vigorously, enthusiastically even.

Finally, he cracked. "Will you please make me some? I need it," he choked. "I'm really sorry! I don't want to be a burden, you guys are so nice but I'm completely dependent and I'm going out of my mind."

"Completely dependent on what?" Stan asked. Tweek just shrugged. He stuck his sliced bagel on a plate and grabbed the coffee beans from the refrigerator.

While the coffee mill did its job, Stan and Tweek stared at each other, no sound passing between them save for the unsettling grinding sound that Kyle unfailingly complained about whenever Stan made coffee with him in the room. Stan began to feel uncomfortable, and he awkwardly coughed and tightened the belt on his maroon robe. Tweek just twitched and clenched his muscles and tilted his head from side to side like he didn't know where he was. As soon as the beans were done, Stan turned his back to Tweek, but every so often he turned around to see the blond man just _staring_ at him, and it was really creeping him out. When half the pot was brewed, Stan poured two cups and thrust one into the hands of his waiting houseguest.

"Thanks," Tweek said happily, but when he had taken a sip of coffee, he scowled.

"What?" Stan asked. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Okay."

"I like it stronger!" Tweek cried out. "Oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to say that."

Stan rolled his eyes, sniffed his mug of coffee, and took a sip. "Tweek, this coffee is so strong it would take the finish off of a credenza."

"A what?"

"How could you possibly imbibe anything stronger than this?"

"I just like strong things," Tweek explained in between sips. "Strong, forceful, bitter, unpleasant, stringent things."

"I see." Stan usually did not approve of eating things upstairs, but to get the hell away from Tweek, he made an exception. With his bagel in one hand and his mug of coffee in the other, he made a mad dash up to the bedroom.

"Kyle," he panted, shutting the door with his ass. "I want that guy out of the house."

"What are you talking about?" Kyle asked, sitting up.

"Tweek. He's freaking me out. He's gotta go."

"What'd he do?"

"What'd he _do_?" Stan asked. "He doesn't _do_ anything, that's the problem. He just sits there shaking like a chihuahua."

Kyle yawned. "Oh well. What are you going to do about it?"

"Ask him to leave," Stan suggested without hesitation.

"Where's my coffee?" Kyle asked.

"Where? Oh, downstairs, still in the carafe." Stan took a sip of coffee. "You don't want any, though, it's not strong enough."

"Why didn't you bring me some?"

"I had to use my second hand to carry my bagel," Stan explained, almost pathetically.

"I see." Kyle threw the covers off and walked over to where Stan was standing awkwardly.

"What are you doing?" he asked as Kyle deftly removed the mug from Stan's hand and got back in bed.

"The problem," Kyle said thoughtfully, drinking coffee and leaning back against his monstrous wall of pillows, "is that if we just tell Tweek to leave, we won't have a bargaining chip. He needs to stay here until we sign a new lease."

"Why do I feel like all of your plans involve absconding with something or hiding someone or some miserable kind of retribution?"

"I don't know," Kyle said with a shrug. "Maybe you're developing a brain tumor. This coffee is horrible, though, Stan, it's _way_ too strong."

"Whatever." Stan took a bite of his bagel. "Hey. What are we going to do about Tweek tonight when we go to my parents'?"

"I don't know." Kyle shrugged. "Leave him here."

XXX

When they came downstairs ready to open the shop for the day, Tweek was sitting on the living room floor with his head in his hands, staring down into a cup of coffee. For a moment Stan assumed that this mug was also empty, but when he saw them, Tweek snatched it up in his hands and some brown liquid sloshed over and rolled down the sides. He was about to scream something like, _holy shit, man, watch out for the carpet_, but given Kyle's tendency to obsessively clean things, he just kept his mouth shut.

"Sorry," Tweek squealed. "Drinking coffee in the living room is not allowed." He said this like he was reading it off of a list of playground rules. Still holding his cup, he got on his knees and then to his feet, and it was immediately obvious that his fly was undone and his shirt was haphazardly buttoned. In fact, it was so egregiously messed up that the third button was in the fifth button hole, and Stan swore that some were even cross-buttoned in non-consecutive order.

"It's okay," Kyle said gently. "What's wrong with your shirt?"

"Oh, Jesus," he chirped again. "I can't handle it!"

"Can't handle what?" Stan asked.

"I can't button a shirt! I can't deal with things having to be in order! I didn't mean to take coffee in the living room, I'm really sorry."

"We don't care," Stan insisted.

"Yeah," Kyle agreed. "Stan eats food in living room all the time and gets it everywhere like a disgusting pig."

"You know, that's really unnecessary," Stan said, voice throbbing with pain.

"Here." Kyle took the mug out of Tweek's hands, and he made a baleful noise when this happened. Stan watched his eyes follow the cup all the way to the side table Kyle set it on, and then he watched Kyle very quietly undo all of Tweek's buttons and then, audibly muttering breathy little curses, re-button the entire thing. This whole time Tweek stood there with his hands loosely around his neck, trembling like a Shaker filled with religious fervor.

"You are a 41-year-old man," Kyle said softly, using what Stan kind of considered his fake-nice-but-condescending tone. "Why can't you button a shirt?"

"I don't know," Tweek admitted. "It's a lot of pressure!"

"Well, how do you get them buttoned at home?"

"Craig does it for me."

Kyle sighed dramatically, and grabbed Tweek's pants by the fly. "Usually I'm doing this in reverse," he said naughtily, giving Tweek a saucy grin.

"You're freaking me out!" Tweek replied. "I don't want to have sex with you! Let's just be friends!"

Kyle rolled his eyes. "It's a joke," Stan explained. Kyle brushed his hands off, looking at Tweek's crotch again.

"Now you're all buttoned," he said happily. "Anyway, we're going to work now."

"You're leaving me?"

"Uh huh," Stan confirmed, helping Kyle into his coat. "Have fun."

"What am I supposed to do while you guys are gone?"

"Read a book?" Kyle suggested.

"No way, man! That's a lot of pressure!"

"Well, not really," Stan said. "What do you think we're going to do, quiz you on it?"

Tweek just looked at them with enormous brown eyes.

"Oh wow," Stan said. "Craig is really a bastard, isn't he?"

"We're late," Kyle said, tugging Stan out the door. "Don't do anything we wouldn't do, Tweek."

"What wouldn't you guys do?" Tweek asked, but the door slammed in his face, and he never got an answer.

XXX

Work was uneventful, although Kyle seemed, well, snippier than usual — probably, Stan figured, because he missed sleeping in on Sundays. In the day-to-day operation of the store, he sat in the back, where he had a nice desk and an ergonomic chair (which didn't match the vibe of the place _at all_), and did the numbers. But since he got all of this done during the week, he spent the majority of the day fidgeting on the couch, trying to talk himself out of taking up knitting.

At one point, he had the gall to say, "There's really no point to me coming in on weekends, you know."

"Really," Stan replied, not particularly impressed.

"I mean, I get my work done during the week."

"Uh huh."

"So maybe I should stay home next weekend," he concluded.

"You think there's no point to being here, do you?"

"Not really," Kyle reaffirmed.

"Not even just to keep me company?" Stan asked.

"Butters used to come in _every_ Sunday by himself."

"Actually, that's not true," Stan corrected. "He had _his_ girlfriend here to hang out with."

"It's too bad you don't have a girlfriend, Stan."

"Why would I ever want a girlfriend when I have Kyle Broflovski?"

Kyle scoffed at this and started thinking about samplers.


	2. Chapter 2

When they got home, they found Tweek sitting on the floor, hands around his legs, knees against his chest. He seemed to be muttering to himself, and he kept flinching. "That poor man!" Kyle exclaimed in a stage whisper. "What's wrong with him?

"I don't know," Stan replied. "But you'd better figure it out before we have to be at my parents' in an hour. Mom's making ropa vieja," he added.

"Me?" Kyle asked, completely ignoring the fact that he loved Sharon Marsh's ropa vieja. "Why do I have to figure it out?"

"You're just so good with _people_," Stan claimed.

"Like hell I am! You're the one who talks old ladies into buying moth-eaten lace tablecloths."

"Oh, but that's too easy. Talking to Tweek without smacking him across the face, now that's _hard_."

"You just don't want to have sex with me ever again, do you? Because that's what I'm getting from you lately, with this behavior."

"Maybe I just resent that you've started trying to control me by withholding sex."

"It's the only thing that works," Kyle hissed.

"Maybe you just need Viagra," Stan suggested, swatting Kyle on the ass as he went upstairs; Kyle's eyes followed him. "Good luck!" he called down from the landing. Kyle made a lewd gesture in retaliation.

Padding into the living room, Kyle sat down next to Tweek and said, "Hey."

Tweek looked at him, with those enormous brown eyes Kyle resented so. "You guys were gone for so long," he said in wonderment.

"Yeah, I know. A full work day. Who knew?"

"Craig brings me to work."

"I'm not Craig."

"I know!" Tweek cried, bursting into tears. His eyes began to redden. "He's so intense, man. I can't take it anymore!"

"All right," Kyle said slowly. "You don't have to take anything. You shouldn't just let some guy boss you around because he wants to devote his life to talking to octogenarians about tea sets and crumbling old books."

"He's not just some guy," Tweek sniffed. "He's _Craig_."

"Is he ever," Kyle mumbled. Tweek wiped his nose, and he was forever shaking, and Kyle was beginning to feel weird about this, so he did what he knew to do, which was make pedantic conversation. "So, what'd you do today?" he asked brightly.

"Sat on the floor."

"You know," Kyle said very delicately, patting Tweek's hand. "You're a grown-up. You can leave the house by yourself. You can go anywhere you want."

"Oh, Jesus, _no_. They'll come _get_ me."

"Who is coming to get you, now?" Kyle was actually very interested in hearing the answer to this question. Tweek just shook his head.

"I see." Kyle sighed, and stood up. He felt the sea foam-colored carpet — it was tacky, he could silently admit to himself, even if he would rather die than admit it to Stan — press into his kneecaps, and he briefly felt like perhaps he was becoming too old to sit on the floor at all. He could hear Stan's voice in his head, chiding him, _Aw, that's ridiculous, you're just a baby _— baby meaning young, of course, not actually a _baby_, and for some reason this made Kyle incredibly sad.

"Right," he said absently. Tweek was looking up at him, and he certainly didn't look old — no, he _actually_ looked like a baby. Kyle proffered a hand and helped him up to his feet, and brushed off the front of his pants, where a million sea foam carpet fibers were now residing. "It'll all be okay, Tweek," he said warmly. "I swear to _God_, man."

"How are you going to do that?" Tweek asked. "You're not with the government, are you?"

"Uh, no." Kyle straightened out his green button-down shirt, and pointlessly stroked at the creases. "I fix things," he said with finality. "That's what I do. We're going to fix everything, man. I _promise_."

Tweek said, "Okay," and Kyle could swear Tweek knew he was speaking primarily to himself.

Stan was not pleased that Tweek was coming to dinner.

"I don't see what's the big deal," Kyle said aimlessly, digging around in his sock drawer. He was slightly annoyed, mostly because he had been planning on getting rather _dolled up_ for this occasion mistakenly believing that perhaps if he looked less haggard and more presentable, it might help things with Randy Marsh go over smoother. Stan very badly had wanted to tell him how stupid this was, that Kyle could be wearing a ball gown or a potato sack or a dinosaur costume, and it really wouldn't matter. But Kyle was suffering under the delusion that maybe his most slimming turtleneck and ass-shaping pants might help. Sadly, because he'd spent the hour he'd been counting on to get ready downstairs with Tweek, now he just had to wear what he'd worn all day to sit around the store.

"What's the big deal?" Stan repeated, waving a shoehorn in Kyle's face. "I'll tell you what the big deal is. You want me to sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk about my sexuality with my father, and now we have to bring along a walking tornado alert. Well, that's just super."

Kyle grasped the shoehorn. "Well, we can't leave him here!"

"I don't see what the big deal is."

"I don't think he's in any state to just sit at our house alone doing nothing! For one thing, we have to feed him. For another, he spends his entire life in emotional abandonment. We can't perpetuate that. It's cruel!"

Fumbling for the door knob, Stan turned around. "You want to know what cruel is?" he asked, before lowering his voice. "We haven't had sex in three weeks. We're about to become unemployed. You want me to majorly upset my family just so that you can feel a little more included, and yet you've never asked me how _I_ feel about it."

"Well," Kyle sniffed, tossing aside the shoehorn and kicking the heels of his saddle shoes against the bed frame. "How do you feel about it?"

"Not so great," Stan confessed. "I mean, he's _my_ dad."

"Oh." Kyle honestly felt somewhat stupid, and when Kyle felt stupid he generally compensated by becoming very angry, the swift machinations of his brain conceiving of ways in which Stan was being unforgivably priggish by suddenly manifesting these so-called 'feelings' of his while here Kyle was, being unjustly disregarded all these years. "I'll be in the car," he snapped, rising off the bed. "With Tweek," he added, for extra punch.

XXX

Both Stan and Kyle shuddered at Sharon Marsh's assertion that Stan was _so like his father_, which she kept repeating under her breath in agitation every time she laid her knife into a salad tomato. "This is so like him, bringing someone extra to dinner and not telling me."

"I promise to never do it again if you just let it go," Stan sighed from the other side of the counter. In truth he felt a bit ashamed — well, stupid, really — and he was having the hardest time not just crying out, _It's all Kyle's fault, he's in love with the little fucker, I wanted to leave him out of this_. But Kyle was standing right next to him, grumbling and trying in vain to uncork the bargain-bin merlot they'd brought, a task Stan had delegated to him because he knew Kyle was absolutely hopeless at opening anything that wasn't a screw-top. When Kyle broke the cork, which Stan expected within the next three minutes, he would send him out to the car to get the real wine. It was all part of his genius plan to buy him a few minutes to speak with his mother.

"It's not merely rude," Sharon continued, wiping her blade on a towel. "I thought you wanted to talk with your father. How is this conducive to that?"

"Didn't say it was."

"Oh no!" Kyle moaned, thrusting the corkscrew (with a lingering chunk of cork) into Stan's clutches. "Godammit, why do you always buy this cheap-ass wine? You know the cork always breaks off!"

"Oops," Stan said lamely. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"Well, I can't get this out." Kyle put his hands on his hips. "What are we going to drink now?"

"I don't know," Stan lied. "You know what?" he added, fake-brightly. "I think I have some emergency wine in the trunk." He pulled his car keys from his pocket and handed them to Kyle. "Why don't you go get _that_?" Kyle acted fairly put-upon about it, but he grudgingly took the keys, and stomped out the back door.

"You know how they say everyone has some kind of learning disability?" Stan asked his pepper-slicing mother. "I think Kyle's is the inability to open wine."

Sharon just sighed and tossed some chopped peppers (all three colors) into the salad bowl. "You said you wanted a 'private family moment,' to tell your father how you feel about him." She picked up a handful of mushrooms, and gestured to the backdoor with her knife. "Tweek was always a nice boy, but I didn't even know you still _spoke_ to him. Why are you bringing him along to dinner?"

"You know our landlord?" Sharon nodded. "They're _together_. And Tweek left him. And for some reason he came to us. And Kyle wouldn't let us just leave him at home." Sharon just gave Stan a disbelieving look. "Well, what do you want from me?" he asked, exasperated.

"This is your problem, Stanley. You just go along with whatever everyone else says you should do. I swear, it's so like your father." She ate a slice of mushroom. "Assert some authority for once!"

"That's easy for you to say!" Stan shot back. "You don't know what Kyle's like when he gets angry!"

"I have a pretty good idea. I do speak to his mother on the phone every week."

"Oh, that's right. Is she refusing to have sex with you, too?"

Sharon chose to ignore this comment. "Your father is a very, mmm, _particular_ man. Just because he doesn't seem to understand _one_ aspect of your relationship doesn't mean he doesn't see how close you are."

"Well, if he doesn't understand it soon, there won't be any of that aspect left for him to grasp!"

"See, this is what I mean! You don't always have to passively let him steer your relationship. You can just…" She thought for a moment. "Well, just crawl on top of him or something. He's a _man_. He's not made of concrete."

"Oh, God." Stan clutched his stomach. "I didn't need that visual."

"Well, this may all be irrelevant." Sharon began dousing the salad in olive oil "As well as your father seems to be getting along with Tweek, I hardly see us having this conversation with him around."

"I'll talk to him after dinner," Stan promised. Then he paused. "How do you know Tweek, anyway?"

Sharon scoffed. "He was in your class. We knew his parents, Stanley."

"You did? Huh. I guess you _did_, although I haven't seen them around for years."

"Of course not," Sharon said bitterly. "They're both dead."

"Oh." Stan looked at his mother. "Sorry?"

She shrugged. "Doesn't bother me. We weren't that close."

The back door flew open, and Stan grabbed the counter to brace himself. "Here is your _emergency wine_, your highness," Kyle said sharply, setting it on the counter. "Are you going to make me open this one, too?"

"What? Kyle, don't be ridiculous." Stan caught his mother's harsh glance, and he shrugged it off to press a kiss to the top of Kyle's head. "Why don't you go hang out with Tweek and my dad?"

"Oh, there's a conversation I want to be stuck in the middle of." Kyle pushed Stan away, but he left the room anyhow. He could be going anywhere, Stan figured, as he was vaguely familiar with the Marsh household, having spent much of his time there, mostly in his underwear, mostly in high school.

"Do you think you can talk to his mom for me?" Stan asked in a whisper.

"Stan, if you guys are having problems," Sharon whispered back, "Maybe you should try counseling."

"No, we're fine. It's just the … you know, the bedroom. Oh God, why am I telling my 68-year-old mother this?"

"I'm not sure either," she replied. "And I can't help you anyway. Sheila and I don't talk about you boys."

"Really?" Stan asked unsurely.

"Yes. What, do you think we would still be friends if I got on the phone every week and said, 'Hi, Sheila, can you talk to your son? Apparently he's suffering from some kind of erectile dysfunction and Stan is being kind of a baby about it.' I mean, really, Stanley. Be a man and make some decisions for once."

"Oh, _be a man_, that's easy for _you_ to say," Stan sniffed, hurt.

Sharon handed him the salad bowl. "Dinner's ready," she said in her normal volume. "Put this on the table." He very much wanted to begin asserting his authority and say, 'Bitch, you put it on the table,' but Stan just sighed, and did what his mother told him.

XXX

After dinner, Stan took his father aside, but he was predictably unable to get a word in. "There's something really off about that guy," Randy said suspiciously. "You don't think he's on drugs, do you?"

"I don't even want to know," Stan admitted.

"Why's he staying with you again?"

"Oh. Um, he and his boyfriend are having a fight."

"His boyfriend?"

"Yeah, Dad. His boyfriend."

"He's gay?"

Stan's ear picked up, and he smiled like an idiot, from ear to ear. "Is he ever!" he said joyously.

"Who's his boyfriend?" Randy asked.

"It's Craig."

"Isn't that the guy…"

"Yeah, he's the guy who owns the space we rent for the store."

"Oh." Stan kept looking at his father with a big, silly grin, hoping beyond hope that his father was going to make the connection. He glanced sideways briefly to see Kyle glaring at him from the kitchen, where he was helping Sharon with the dishes. Stan pursed his lips together and blew Kyle a kiss; Kyle rolled his eyes, but Stan could tell that he was smiling, too. Everything was going great, everything was going awesome, and then…

"So, uh … why's he staying with _you_?"

"Oh." Stan's smile shrunk a bit. "I told you, he and Craig aren't getting along."

"I know, you said that," Randy clarified. "I mean, why's he want to stay with you guys?"

"I guess … well, he said he kind of looked up to Kyle and me, and how we get along so well, and how he wished he and Craig were more like that." Stan shrugged. "I guess he's just looking for a same-sex relationship he can admire." Stan felt this was a somewhat haughty, or at least pompous assessment, but he was trying to make a point here.

"Doesn't he have any male friends he can look up to?"

"I don't think Craig really gives him the chance to have a lot of friends."

Randy put a hand on Stan's shoulder. "I'm proud of you, son," he said kindly. "Taking that man in is such a kind thing to do."

"Dad, don't you ever think there's something _queer_ about my relationship with Kyle?"

"Well, of course," Randy shrugged. "But look, it's the 21st century. I'm willing to accept that two men might want to live together in a completely non-gay way."

"But Dad—"

"No, Stan, I'm a tolerant man. If you want to wait to get married and live with your friend and take in homosexuals who are having relationship issues, I'm cool with it. One day, when you have children, I can only hope you'll be as understanding a father as I was."

"You don't understand nearly half of what you think you do," Stan grumbled.

"And I'm just so glad you're finally using that guest room," Randy concluded.

XXX

Kyle was bristling with anger when he got in the car. "Well, that went awesome," he spat bitterly, making sure to slam the door with extra emphasis. "What a solid ending to a lovely week."

"Oh no," Tweek moaned. "What did I do now?"

"Oh, honey," Kyle cooed, turning around the face the houseguest in the backseat. "You didn't do anything."

"I didn't?"

"Oh, no. It's not your fault Stan's father thinks I'm just living with him because I can't afford my own place."

"He thinks that?" Tweek asked. "Why would he think that?"

"Because he sucks," Stan breathed, eyes on the road.

"Because Stan is too big of a pussy to tell his dad he's a big fat homo who likes antiquing and _Dynasty_ and Tom of Finland."

Tweek's voice perked up. "You do? I love Tom of Finland."

"I don't like Tom of Finland," Stan scoffed. "Kyle's just being a bitch."

"Oh, I'm just being a bitch, but if you went into coma tomorrow and I wanted to keep you in a permanent vegetative state for 50 years, Randy Marsh would be like, nuh-uh, and pull the plug."

"That's horrible!" Tweek gasped.

"I know," Kyle sighed.

"Why would you keep someone alive like that? It's barely living!"

"He's just being dramatic," Stan said calmly.

"Like hell I am," Kyle snapped.

"Craig wants to be shot in the face the moment he turns 50," Tweek announced.

Stan whistled appreciatively. "Who knew Craig was so hardcore?"

"Wait a minute," Kyle drawled, slapping his hand over Stan's mouth. "We only have to wait nine years, and then we can just pick up our lease from the county? Oh, happy day."

"I don't think so," Stan gasped when Kyle removed his hand. "Tweek would probably inherit it."

"I already own it," Tweek said, but nobody heard him.

"Yes, of course," Kyle said bitterly. "I forgot that Craig's parents probably know Tweek is their son's boyfriend and wouldn't fuck around with his inheritance."

"I already own the store," Tweek repeated.

"My father would not deny you any inheritance, Kyle!" Stan shouted. "That's just absurd. He knows how much you mean to me."

"Oh good, so when you do die, after your father pulls the plug under my nose, I can have my measly 18,000 dollars, and endure another 20 years of, 'Why would Stan leave his money to his roommate?' " Kyle concluded his lame Randy Marsh impression. "But at least he knows we're super-close roommates."

"Why aren't you guys listening to me?" Tweek cried. "I already own the store! It's in _my_ name! I already own it!"

Stan violently braked and the car squeezed to a stop, while Kyle got on his knees and peered at Tweek over the street. "You what?" he whispered.

"Craig doesn't own your store, I own your store. Craig just runs it. It's mine," Tweek explained. "Oh god, don't hate me!"

XXX

It was somewhat satisfying to have Tweek sitting on the couch by himself while Kyle paced back and forth, interrogating him. Stan just stood against the wall, arms crossed, seemingly fairly upset, but Kyle didn't have time to worry about _him_ right now. "All this time," Kyle said slowly, thoughtfully. "We were getting angry at Craig." He stopped. "And it's really _you_, isn't it?"

"What? Me?" Tweek put his hands on his head, obviously meaning to grasp his hair, of which he now had very little to pull at. "No way, man! I don't do anything with your store! I just own it!"

"But you could overrule him, couldn't you, since it's your property?"

"I don't know!" Tweek cried honestly. "I don't do that stuff! It's way too much pressure! I don't even touch money!" He held up his hands. "I don't have a single dime, honest! It freaks me out, man! I hate it!"

"Well, how did you get a property on Main Street if you don't know anything about money?"

"Oh God, I don't know!"

"Liar!" Kyle accused.

Without an answer, Tweek was rocking back and forth, hugging himself, really freaking out. From the other side of the room Stan was beginning to feel badly about it; this man was unstable, not right, and here Kyle was driving him to the edge with accusations he didn't understand. He did consider stopping it, pulling Kyle off and asking him to halt, but he couldn't. He couldn't do it. Tweek was starting to cry, and Kyle was just _yelling_ at him, and Stan felt his heart squeezing, torn between his discomfort with seeing this poor man ripped apart, and his need to protect Kyle from himself. He hated telling Kyle he was wrong about as much as Kyle hated knowing it. But that was their relationship — Kyle was the rational one who made decisions. Stan was just the band, providing the sensational background to the whole thing.

"I wouldn't do that to you guys," Tweek was saying through his agony. "I don't know how much you pay! I don't want to know! I didn't know he was raising your rent! I don't know anything! I'm just the owner," he sobbed. "Why don't you believe me? I thought you were so nice." His voice broke on the word 'nice' and he just kind of wept, head in hands.

Kyle turned to Stan. "This is pathetic," he said.

"I know," Stan agreed tonelessly.

"Lower our rent," Kyle said sternly, looking back at Tweek.

"I can't! I don't know how!"

"You write up a contract!" Kyle informed.

"I don't know how!" Tweek repeated. "Oh God," he said miserably, wiping his eyes. "I miss Craig so much."

"Why do you miss him?" Kyle asked. "He's abusive."

Tweek stopped crying when he heard this, although his voice remained distinctly warbled. "No he's not."

"You might be a goddamn liar," Kyle began, which made Tweek groan and Stan sigh. "But what's worse is when you lie to yourself, Tweek."

"I'm not," Tweek claimed. "Nothing between us is nonconsensual."

"Sure," Kyle said.

"Maybe he takes it too far. Maybe I needed a break. But that's me," Tweek sighed. He was starting to calm down now that the topic was away from money and back to Craig. "I like it that way. You must be submissive—"

"We are _not_ discussing my sexual preference!" Kyle roared.

"If only there were some of it left," Stan muttered.

Perhaps Kyle didn't hear him, or perhaps Tweek was just too quick. "He does not abuse me!" he declared. "He has never raped me or hit me or done anything to me that I didn't ultimately enjoy!"

"But rape is rape, Tweek, even if you do…" Kyle paused to choose his words carefully. "…climax," he concluded.

"I decide what's rape. We have some issues but our problems aren't sexual! We're very compatible!"

Kyle put his hands on his hips. "Oh, so now you're changing your tune?"

"I wasn't singing!"

Stan slouched against the wall, looking heavenward, but he only caught a glimpse of the shoddily patched crack in the ceiling. He felt bad that it was so poorly done, but he wasn't exactly a handyman, and if Kyle thought hiring a contractor was a waste of money, Stan figured he could have done it himself, although Kyle probably would have done an even worse job than Stan had managed. Averting his gaze from the patch, he sighed, "Enough," and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Kyle, can I speak to you?"

Tweek was still cowering; Kyle was still fuming. His answer was, "No."

"Well, it wasn't a request," Stan informed him, pushing Kyle out of the living room and into the kitchen, where he pushed Kyle into a chair at the table. "You have to stop this right now," he said genially, not wishing to make it sound like a command.

"Oh, really." Kyle did not seem pleased. "Stan, that guy is fucking us over! Do you want to lose the business? I'm beginning to think you do."

"What? No! Oh Jesus, Kyle." Stan pulled out a chair and sat down. "This has really gone too far. I mean, I admit, I don't _know_ Tweek, but I'm willing to bet that he has some kind of mental problem or emotional problem or something."

"I think his only problem is Stockholm syndrome."

Stan considered this briefly, and said, "Actually, I might agree with you." Kyle opened his mouth to speak, so Stan quickly added, "It would probably explain why he wants to keep hanging out with us."

"Well, why wouldn't he? We don't treat him like a goddamn sex slave _dog_."

"No," Stan agreed, shaking his head. "But _you_ treat him like a hostage."

"Me?" Kyle shrieked, grabbing the edge of the table. "I'm just trying to do what's best for him." He put a contemplative finger to his lips. "And it just so happens that it might also work out well for us."

"This is working out well for nobody. I'm calling Craig tomorrow and telling him to take Tweek home."

Kyle made an attempt at protest as Stan left the room without sticking around to hear it.

XXX

Calling Craig at work the next day was one of the most awkward, embarrassing moments of Stan's adult life. He tried to get Kyle to do it, but Kyle refused to listen, locking Stan out of the back so that when he did make the call, he had to do it sitting on the sofa. Midway through the conversation — "conversation" being a stretch, considering that Craig had simply gone off on him — a pair of ladies came into the store and, when catching the owner sitting by himself, on a cellular phone, looking absolutely crushed, they both gave each other dubious glances and left, the faint tinkling of the door bells reminding Stan of the lost potential sales as Craig continued to verbally abuse him in the other ear. He was beginning to feel that perhaps he should have just left this one well enough alone — let Kyle handle it. As it happened, the only time Stan saw Kyle all day was when he left the office to go get lunch. He came back 20 minutes later with a sandwich and a fountain drink. Stan made a half-hearted attempt to follow him back there, but Kyle shut the door on him, and Stan didn't stick around to listen in on what Kyle might be doing. Probably, it wasn't even something interesting.

After work, Stan knocked on the office door softly, and tried to subtly jiggle the knob, but it was still locked. "I'm going home," he announced, wondering if Kyle wasn't listening to NPR with headphones on, or hadn't snuck out the window just to get the hell out of there. (After thinking this, Stan reminded himself that Kyle wouldn't fit through the window.)

Unexpectedly, though, he got an answer back. "Go home," Kyle growled through the door.

"Don't you want a ride?"

"I'll walk."

"But it's really cold out, and kind of sleeting," Stan informed him.

"At least I'm not wearing flip-flops."

Stan tried not to laugh at this, but he couldn't help himself — it was funny. Kyle was funny. He got the momentarily fleeting feeling of sadness that he used to get when he was younger, when he caught a whiff of unfairness or injustice. But this was directed inwardly. He rapped on the door again. "Are you sure…?"

"Yes," Kyle answered in a stiff tone.

He wanted to get out his key, the one Kyle knew he had, to every lock in the shop. His key — what a joke. What a joke. It was _Craig's_ key, and soon he'd have to get rid of it. He tossed the keys up and caught them, flipping off the lights as he departed, wondering why he was bothering — the only people who cared about their utility bills were Kyle and Craig.

XXX

Sleeping on the living room couch, Tweek looked normal, nearly peaceful, with one of Kyle's stiff oxford shirts tucked into his tight jeans. Stan felt like a traitor — although a traitor to Kyle or Tweek, he didn't know which. He didn't want to wake the guy, but he knew Craig would show up soon, and Tweek should probably be ready to go. And it would be unfair to spring this on him without fair warning. So he did, and Tweek sat up and rubbed his eyes, yawning.

"The day passes so quickly when you just sleep through it," he said wisely, tucking his legs under his bottom. "Don't you think?"

"I rarely sleep past 8 a.m., if that," Stan answered.

"Me and Craig don't get up until a lot later."

"I can imagine." Stan coughed. "Listen, Tweek." Tweek caught this and looked up at him fondly, intently, obviously curious. "I … aw, man." Stan found himself sitting down on the couch, wondering how this man who was exactly his age — as exact as it got for adults, anyhow, not in the way children considered _exact_ to reach down like roots to the second or the minute — could belie such age, radiate such a powerful childlike glance. It upset him, and yet it calmed him, because he had nephews … and nieces. He knew how to talk to children. Tweek might not have been a child, but that was what helped Stan swallow nervously and tell him that Craig was coming to take him home, and if he didn't go home with Craig, he had to go somewhere else.

Surprisingly, Tweek was quite calm about it. "Okay," he said steadily. "I'm ready to go anyhow."

"You are?" Stan asked, shaken from this entire thing.

"Yeah," Tweek confirmed. "Jesus, you guys were nice, though. I really owe you."

"You don't owe us at all. I think we did you more of a disservice than anything. I mean, we don't know you at all, and here we…" Stan wanted very badly to say "Kyle tried to fix your problems" but then, even if he hadn't wanted anything to do with it, didn't like Tweek, didn't want to bring him to dinner, didn't care if he and Craig ever got on again, even for the sake of getting their rent slashed back down to something they were capable of paying, to Stan, it was always _we_. So they weren't married, and didn't have children. His life was bundled up with Kyle's like a china tea set, or a pair of candlesticks, or bookends: You couldn't buy one without the other. So he just said "we" to Tweek, and trailed off. But then he added, "Sorry I make poor coffee."

"It's okay," Tweek said, and it amazed Stan how soft and muted his voice felt. But then the doorbell rang, and he cried out again, "Gah! Oh shit!" and hid behind his hands. So much for that.

It wasn't Craig at the door, though. It was Kyle. "Aw, man, you're all wet and probably cold," Stan said as he pulled him inside, throwing his coat over the coat rack to get that soggy weight off of him. "Where are your keys, anyway?"

Kyle sneezed. "Jacket pocket," he shivered.

"Well, why didn't you use them?" Stan asked.

"_Your_ jacket pocket."

Stan nodded in recognition, and was just tipping the door shut when it was caught by a set of hairy knuckles and neatly trimmed nails. Stan dragged Kyle (who sneezed again) back, and Craig stepped inside, looking just as immune to the climate as Kyle seemed susceptible. "Bad time?" he asked, looking from wet, glassy-eyed Kyle with his red, raw cheeks to flush, dry Stan, who was unnaturally stiff with apprehension at his decisions. Stan held Kyle a little tighter for warmth, and they both stared at their new guest, who went on to declare, "I don't give a shit. Give me Tweek, please."

Stan cleared his throat. "He's in the living room."

Craig's expression seemed to lift, and suddenly, for the first time in quite some time (as long as he'd been their gruff landlord, anyhow), Craig's face no longer seemed angry — in fact, he seemed much more worried, and far less sated than usual. "Tweek?" he called out warily, venturing into the living room with obvious trepidation. Stan saw this but looked away, feeling Kyle's cold, trembling hands at his forearms, and laid his lips against a tight, chilly cheek, in which he even felt the subtle scrawl of Kyle's auburn five o'clock shadow bristling. Kyle made a defeated noise and broke away, following Craig into the living room.

Feeling lost, and somewhat useless, Stan went in there, too, to find Kyle motionless, frozen as he watched Tweek and Craig reunite, the former just babbling with his usual chorus of, "Jesus Christ, oh my God," and the latter grasping him around the shoulders fiercely, saying, "I swear to God, in the name of all that is holy and all that is profane, if you_ ever_ so much as _think_ about leaving me again" right into Tweek's face. It took Stan a moment, but by the time he finally grabbed Kyle's free hand, he knew that Craig wasn't trailing off for lack of an effective threat; he was leaving his thoughts unpunctuated because he was afraid to admit the truth, that if Tweek ever thought about leaving him again they might not have another scene like this, and it scared him. Kyle whispered something inaudible to Stan, and let go, and as he trudged away and toward the stairs, Stan regretted the way Kyle's erudite-looking khakis were darkened toward the bottoms with the horrible slop he'd walked home in.

XXX

Of course, Craig was furious.

And it would have been ridiculous to expect him to be any of the following: Forgiving, understanding, subtle, graceful, lenient, willing to let it go. After he took Tweek home — "We'll get you his ugly shirt back," he assured Stan in his most hostile sneer, leaving Stan to wonder how the fuck Craig knew it was Kyle's — he returned, dressed no less severely than before, still looking relatively unfazed by the fact that the weather outside had turned in the past few days from below freezing to rain to sleet to outright snow, which was now blanketing the front lawn as well as the dorky mailbox painted with the painfully acceptable designation _Broflovski-Marsh_. No 'and,' no nothing. But now it was snowing.

"Him," Craig demanded, pointing at Kyle, who by now had bathed and dressed and was wearing, oddly enough, the same black knit turtleneck he thought was suitably graceful enough to charm Randy Marsh, and the same dark-washed jeans he assumed would have flattered the middle-aged spread of his behind enough to make the whole thing appear presentable for the man's beloved son. But, okay, Stan figured, sizing up Craig, who was taller, stronger, more solid and confident than Kyle even in his stupidest little flip-flops, this is what Kyle did when he was nervous.

"Can I get you anything?" Stan asked, hoping like hell he could stay.

"Yeah," Craig said stoutly. "Your three most expensive liquors, jigger of each, with a shot of passion fruit syrup."

"How do you know we have passion fruit syrup?" Kyle asked.

Craig smirked. "You look like the sort of man who drinks a lot of hurricanes," he said knowingly. "Because I sure as fuck know you're the eye in plenty of them."

Kyle and Craig sat at the kitchen table while Stan scrambled to make this cocktail of Cointreau, Kahlua, and Malibu, shot of passion fruit syrup. If nothing else, he wanted to make it palatable.

"We're not loaded," he said, setting it in front of Craig, hoping his good-faith umbrella wouldn't be disposed of.

It was. "Not my problem," he said, taking a swig. He looked at Stan. "Get out of here," he commanded. Then he pointed at Kyle. "All right, Broflovski. Let's talk."

XXX

"He has dependent personality disorder," was the first thing Craig said. "Did you have any idea? Because on one hand, I bet you really didn't, so it was really quite horrible of you to assume you knew everything that was going on, wasn't it? And if that's the case, why didn't you figure out _something_ was the matter? I mean, _fuck_, you're not a moron, are you?" Kyle shook his head slowly. "Oh, no. You _aren't_. What you are, though, is a selfish little pig fucker."

"Selfish?" Kyle cried out, breaking his steely calm. "I am not selfish!"

"Okay," Craig agreed. "No more selfish than me."

"Than you?" Kyle laughed, openly, out of nervousness, not because he found it funny. "You're a_ rapist_," he concluded soberly.

"That's funny," Craig said in a way that made it very clear that it was only funny in the ironic or incorrect sense. "How dare you judge me?"

"Because he's not just some property or some coffee table of yours. He's a _person_. He makes his own decisions."

Bursting forth with a short, cruel laugh, Craig wiped his eyes. "Where did you hear that?" he asked. "Oprah? _The View_? Your mom? Tweek _can't_ make his own decisions, not usually. It's impossible for him." Kyle opened his mouth to speak, but Craig just started speaking over him before an interruption was ever possible. "You live in such a small little world, Broflovski. You and that 90-year-old woman you call a boyfriend think everything can be categorized so neatly, well, it can't. Tweek has problems. He's on a lot of medication. He gets a lot of therapy. Like most people who have serious psychological issues, he didn't think ahead before he ran out. If you'd just given him back to me everything would have been fine. But you thought you could put one over me, so you decided to 'protect' him." Kyle's eyebrows shot up. "No kidding. I knew what you were doing. You want to keep your stupid little store. My question is, why?"

"Well," Kyle choked out. "It makes Stan happy."

"That's right. But what does Stan do to make you happy?" Kyle pursed his lips and crossed his arms and let his posture go slack. He knew what Craig was doing, and he wasn't going to let Craig win. "That's what I thought," Craig said snidely.

"Listen," Kyle said with a gasp. His eyelids felt so heavy, like he just wanted to shut them against these mind games and accusations. "You don't know me and Stan, not like you think you do. We have a complex relationship."

"I have had it with this bullshit," Craig snapped. "You want to hate me because I am raising the rent, fine. Go ahead. I deserve your hatred. I don't really give a crap, but fair's fair in the antiques business." Craig cleared his throat. "But on the other hand, don't take your pissy anal-retentive frustration out on me or my lover. No matter what kind of bad guy I am, I'm plenty good to him."

"You treat him like a dog!" Kyle barked in protest.

Craig shook his head. "It's a sad day when a gay man can't recognize a fetish."

"Stan and I don't need fetishes. We _love_ each other."

"Not physically." Craig put his hands on his hips. "I can tell," he said knowingly.

"God fucking dammit, Craig! You are not fucking South Park's fucking goddamn gay Batman!"

Craig laughed. "You're very funny."

"I am?"

"Don't fish for compliments."

"I'm not," Kyle said innocently, slightly charmed. "Look, if Tweek has some kind of personality disorder—"

"A severe one," Craig added. "Tell Stan this drink is disgusting." He slammed the empty glass on the table.

"If there's something so _wrong_ with him," Kyle insisted, "isn't it unfair of you to manipulate him into a sexual relationship?"

"I'm not _manipulating _him, you understand. I _love _him. I know _love_ looks to both of you like something you saw on _Bewitched_, what with the charming, coy bickering about money and family acceptance and who gets what fucking side of the bed, but that's not the case for me and Tweek. And it is _horribly_ insulting that you would hold us to your idiotic standards."

"Oh, that's certainly dandy, you should judge _us_, call our standards idiotic."

"It's about as fair as you basing your assessment of our relationship off of one tiny _marital_ spat."

Kyle mulled over this word, _marital_. If Craig could use it, why couldn't he? "Are you married?" he asked raptly, inching in closer to Craig, who was now twirling the cocktail umbrella with his thumb and forefinger.

Smiling deviously, and leaning in just near enough so that his lips didn't touch Kyle's face, Craig hissed, "Yes." Kyle's eyes widened, and then settled in sadness. Craig continued: "In Vancouver. And Vermont. It's all pretty legal." Tossing the umbrella behind his shoulder, Craig sat back.

Kyle blinked. "If Tweek is so despondent, do you mind telling me where he got the money to own retail space on Main Street?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Well…" Kyle swallowed. "We've been your tenants for years. I'd like to know."

"I should be insulted that you called him despondent, because he's not, he's quite happy."

"He left you because he's happy?"

"No," Craig growled. "He left me because I asked him not to cut all of his hair off with a scissors." Kyle rolled his eyes. "Look, do you want to accuse me of raping a grown man all night, or do you want any answer?" Kyle didn't say anything. "His parents had a coffee shop. They were bought out by a conglomerate. They made a lot of money. They invested it wisely. They drove off a cliff." Craig's stopped for a moment, and his face became softer, if only for a second. It was the second time in as many decades Kyle had seen him looking any way other than angry. "We all die, you know. And since Tweek is incapable of handling these issues, I handle the money. And we've got so fucking much of it because I'm a genius."

"Well," Kyle drawled, unimpressed. "That doesn't explain why _he_ owns a store space on Main Street."

"Because I bought it for him with his money and put it in his name!"

"Oh."

"Oh, _yes_." Craig yawned, but Kyle was fairly sure he was exaggerating. "There's only so long I can have this conversation for. I've got Tweek, you've got…" Craig glanced around the room. "Purple fucking counters, apparently."

"It's lavender Corian."

"Right. Well, I'm not going to pretend it's not tragic, because is it. Anyway." Craig pushed his chair away from the table, and stood. "This has been delightful, and I'm sure you're feeling very dejected."

"Don't tell me how to feel," Kyle spoke up to Craig, who was now standing over him, arms akimbo.

"I'll see myself out."

Kyle felt sat with his chin in his palm and his elbow on the table as he watched Craig depart the house, ass crack proudly standing in for any kind of goodbye wave. "Well, that didn't resolve anything," he said to himself after he heard the door slam. Craig was right, though — he was feeling pretty dejected. When he got into bed, Stan was already asleep — mouth open, hair mussed, face-up, pajama top riding up to his nipples, covers stuffed between his thighs. Despite whatever else was wrong, the sight made Kyle grin as he slipped off his jeans and began to floss.

XXX

It had been two days since Tweek's departure, and Stan and Kyle found that business was great — largely in part to the enormous signs they'd hung up in the windows: _Liquidation_. _Everything Must Go_. _Lost Our Lease_. Making them was easy; Stan simply procured some poster paint and butcher paper. Putting them up, that was the hard part. Before opening up for the day, Stan approached Kyle, who sat at his desk, head in his hands, elbows on the blotter. He had no paperwork to do.

"Hey," Stan said cautiously, even timidly.

"Hi," Kyle said drowsily. "What's going on?"

"Nothing much," Stan said casually. "Business as usual."

"Not for long."

"Yeah…"

Stan rubbed at the wood floor with his foot, making squeaky, odd noises to fill the silence. He cleared his throat, and Kyle looked up at him. "Do you, uh … you think you want anything, you know, from the shop?"

"Oh." Kyle swallowed. "No. That's … that's okay."

"Because, you know, we can pretty much have anything we want."

"I know. I just…" Kyle gave Stan a weak little smile. "I don't really like antiques, is the thing." He tried to sound as happy as he could. "I like, you know, hideous 1980s throwback pastels and things."

"Yeah." Stan smiled in agreement. "You have horrible taste."

"I do, don't I?"

"Yeah." Stan coughed. "How's the job hunt going?" he asked.

"Oh. I haven't really … you know, we have a couple of weeks. Besides, I don't…" Kyle sighed. "Well, I can get some accounting job," he concluded.

"Yeah."

"Maybe we can find you something in appraisals. You know, places like auction houses, they're always looking for people."

"Are they?" Stan asked.

"I don't know," Kyle admitted. "I just assumed they were."

"Well," Stan concluded, straightening the hem of his sweater. "It's time to open up for the day."

"Okay." Kyle gave a distracted little wave. "Good luck."

For lunch, they had leftover ropa vieja. It was half a week old, but cold, you almost couldn't tell. Stan drank a Sprite, and Kyle took small sips of lukewarm water from a styrofoam cup he'd filled in the bathroom sink. They talked sort of generally about Kyle's oldest niece, whose bat mitzvah was coming up. "Do you want to come down to Florida with me?" Kyle asked tentatively.

"Of course," Stan answered without missing a beat. "Why wouldn't I?"

Kyle sighed, and crushed his empty cup in his hand, relishing the satisfying squelch of the waxy material. "Why would you want to come for some stupid Jew thing, and hang out with distant relatives I don't really know, and a bunch of prepubescent Florida kids?"

"Well, it's _family_, Kyle, of course I'm going. Why would you even ask?"

"Like I said," Kyle began, voice tightening. "They're _my_ relatives, and I barely even care."

"It's _family_," Stan repeated.

"Oh, sure," Kyle snapped. "My family is your family, but as far as your dad is concerned, I'm just some dude who lives with you."

Stan sighed, and put his head in his hands. "Oh, Jesus," he muttered. "Oh, good lord. Not this _again_, Kyle, _please_."

"Well, I'll buy you a ticket, if you really want to come with."

"_Yes_," Stan hissed. "I want to come with. You went to my sisters' kid's sweet sixteen, I mean, _my God_."

"It still amazes me that she threw him a fucking girls' birthday party."

"I know," Stan agreed, mood picking up suddenly. "That kid is such a little flamer."

"I think I caught him checking me out once, if you want to know the truth."

"Well, you know us Marshes, we can't keep our eyes off of you."

"How sweet." Kyle rolled his eyes.

"It's true. I think it's genetic, I think we're attracted to stocky little redheads with abnormally large—" Kyle had been preparing to feign objection to whatever Stan was going to say, but the bells on the door chimed, and he stopped speaking and Kyle stopped listening just in time to behold Craig, flip-flopping toward them in all of his bulging, golden glory.

"Oh no," Stan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What now?"

"You think that's any way to greet your overlord?" Craig asked, brushing some hair out of his eyes.

"Yes," Kyle said frankly. "You're not really our favorite person right now."

"Feeling's mutual," Craig announced. "Tweek is a mess, you know. He didn't even want to leave the house today."

This did not impress Kyle. "Oh, you left him home alone, did you? Wow. What prompted that? Couldn't find a short enough leash?" Stan meant not to provoke this any further, but he found the literal absurdity of the thing to be sort of funny, he so gave a small laugh, which prompted Kyle even further: "You know, with anyone else that would just be a metaphor," he continued. "But you actually drag your boyfriend around on a _leash_. And you do it so regularly, too, it's actually only just struck me how wonderfully _fucked up_ that is, Craig. It's like you've completely normalized humiliation for an entire generation of children in this town. Well done."

Something remarkable about Craig was that comments like this never bothered him, or if they did, he was quite successful at not feeding into it. "I see a couple of days haven't softened you," he said.

"That's Kyle," Stan replied with faint amusement.

"Can we help you, Craig? Or did you just come to gloat?"

"For all your ethical superiority," Craig said brashly, drawing something out of his back pocket, "you're both heinous bitches, you know."

"Well, Kyle might be," Stan reasoned.

"Oh, _shut up_, Stan, seriously."

"Boys." Craig snapped his fingers, and they both looked up at Craig, who was now holding a square of folded paper in his hand. "Tweek and I have talked," he said sternly. "I do not know what you _did_ to him, but under his advisement…" Craig trailed off, and stuck the paper in Kyle's face. "I thoroughly expect both of you to kiss my ass, though." He caught Stan's eyebrow raise at this. "Not literally, of course."

Kyle scrambled to open the paper, and his mouth dropped open. He stuck a hand out. "Pen," he gasped.

Stan asked, "What?"

"Give me a pen!" Kyle shouted, smacking him.

"Fine, shit," Stan grumbled, reaching around to grab a ballpoint pen off of a nearby table. "Demanding much?"

Kyle did not hesitate to click the pen open and he very hastily laid down his flowery signature, all loops and discernable flourishes.

"What?" Stan asked again. "I swear to god, Kyle…"

"Here." Kyle handed him the paper, and he smoothed it out on the table, and read the document heading; it was a lease.

"Did you just sign a 10,000-dollar monthly lease?" Stan asked dubiously.

"It's for one grand," Craig said suddenly.

"You have to sign," Kyle choked out.

"I'm not signing anything for this lunatic," Stan said, indicating Craig.

"He's not raising the rent," Kyle gritted. "Fucking sign it, Stanley."

Stan hunched over the paper, and made quite of show of reading every last word, much to both Craig's and Kyle's annoyance. When he got to the end, he raised his eyes, and said directly to Craig, "I want to own this shop." He paused. "Not just the business. I want the space."

Craig looked cross, and he quickly bent over and pulled the contract away. "Well, you can't have it, Mr. Marsh. It's not for sale." Stan frowned, and clicked his pen rapidly. "Aw, isn't that sad? You only get your way _sort of_. Heartbreaking."

"Fuck you, Craig," Stan sneered. "Give me that." He snatched the paper away from Craig, who looked scandalized, and clicked the pen once more, and scribbled out _Stanley Marsh_ in his messy, haughty script. "There you are, my liege. Signed, sealed, and delivered."

"Well, considering I'm sitting right here, it's hardly been delivered."

Craig folded up the paper and extended his hand to Kyle, who looked at Stan, and Stan just said, "We hate you, Craig."

"Well, you're getting this store for another five years for a grand," Craig said simply. "That's a long time. You'll be robbing _me_ by the end."

"Maybe Tweek would sell us the building before then," Kyle said softly.

"All things are possible," Craig reasoned. Then he quickly added: "But not likely. We do make decisions together. Fair's fair."

"If fair's fair," Kyle hissed, "then get the fuck out of our shop."

Craig laughed, and stuck his contract in his back pocket. He slammed his hands down on the table happily. "You boys aren't so bad," he said. "But I still wouldn't fuck either of you on E with my eyes closed." He reached out and touched Kyle on the nose, which made Stan jump to his feet, and Kyle flinch. "Though your temper is very attractive, you know, if perhaps you weren't such a sad little girl, I might consider it."

"Get out," Stan growled territorially. "Get out get out _get out_!"

"I'm going." Craig grinned. "Have a nice life, gentlemen. Thank you for giving Tweek the need for six months of constant psychotherapy."

"Get out!" Kyle bellowed.

He did.

XXX

Stan's pressing offer of celebratory sex was met with daggers, and Stan briefly worked on a list of people who might know where he could get some Viagra he could unwittingly slip into Kyle's coffee. Sadly, as soon as scribbled down Craig's name, he immediately crossed it off, and that left Kenny, who was in jail. This left him slightly depressed, and he fell asleep that night on the living room couch, only to wake up in the morning still wearing his chinos and argyle sweater vest. Kyle was standing over him, lounge pants, no shirt, brandishing a mug of coffee, and the remote. "_Red Shoe Diaries_, Stan? Really?" he asked, not quite in disbelief.

"I can explain," Stan said groggily.

"It's better if you don't." Kyle handed him the coffee, and that was the end of their discussion.

At least a couple people came into the store that day and asked about the sale, but Stan's happy reply of "Well, we got our lease back!" was met with the discouraging response, "What a shame." Yes, what a shame. What a shame they hadn't lost their only source of income (aside from Kyle's extremely un-liquid CD holdings) and had to get real jobs that would have made them both miserable. As this lady left the shop, Pomeranian in arms, Stan gave her both fingers, but he dropped them quickly enough when a young lady with back-length buttery hair came into the store and batted her green-painted eyelids at him.

"Hello," she said breathily, in the sweetest voice imaginable. "My fiancé is locking up his bike, but…" She blushed. "We're looking for a bed," she concluded.

"Lovely," Stan said genially, taking her hands to shake them. "Congratulations. We, uh … we have a lot of beds. Well." He paused. "More than two. That's a lot, right?" She smiled at him, and Stan smiled back; he liked this _so much_. Old crap made people so _happy_. "How much are you looking to spend?"

The girl giggled. She didn't seem particularly young, but she laughed like a schoolgirl, and Stan wanted to average these things out to … 27, maybe? What a lovely age to get married. Stan loved women, loved the ethereal softness they kept so unguarded. They were all like porcelain figurines. He'd never want to have sex with a piece of Lladro, or anything like that, but he loved looking at her. She was captivating.

"Money doesn't matter," she answered brightly, like this was making her day. She seemed really coy. Stan was glad no one else was around so he could flirt with her a little. That might take his mind of the ever-growing gloom that Kyle had become recently.

"You must have a wonderful fiancé," Stan replied.

"He's an angel. In fact…" They both turned at the jingle of the bells. "Here he is." She sprinted over to him, and Stan had to take a step back to register that this man his charming customer was kissing on the lips was Butters.

"Hey Stan!" Butters said casually, approaching the counter like he didn't have a huge print of crimson grease smeared across his lips now. "You met Lill?"

"Um, yeah," Stan fumbled. "Oh my God, _Butters_, you're getting _married_?"

"Sure am," Butters confirmed, putting an arm around this blonde who was apparently his girlfriend _Lillian_, who had apparently had_ sex_ in this store. "Proposed and everything."

"It was so _romantic_," Lillian squealed. "Dinner, candlelight, roses, down on one knee…" She hoisted her finger up for Stan to see the ring, which was topped with a princess-cut diamond. He didn't know much about jewelry, so he just licked his lips and smiled at it, the ring, as if it weren't an inanimate object.

"Who knew Butters was so romantic?" he asked.

"I did," Lillian sighed, kissing Butters on the cheek. Now his face had _two_ lipstick marks on it, but Butters didn't care, he just blushed and looked heavenward.

"But now we need a bed," he said. "Think you can help us?"

"I … I think so," Stan replied. "But really, we should…" He stopped and turned toward the office door behind him. "Kyle?"

Kyle stuck his head out of the office. "Oh," he said suddenly, holding the doorframe. "Butters."

"Hey Kyle." Butters gave a little wave. "I'd like you to meet my fiancée, Lill."

Letting go of the edges of the doorframe, Kyle stepped cautiously toward the girl, and took her hand. "Lillian," he said casually. "Butters told us about you."

"Did he?" she asked, releasing Kyle's grip.

"Yeah," Stan confirmed. "Right before we fired him."

"Laid off," Kyle corrected. "Although now that we got the lease back — Did you get my message about that, by the way? — I suppose you can have your job back, now."

"Oh," Butters said sheepishly. "You want your weekends back, don't you?"

"Who wouldn't?" Stan asked.

"We've done it like twice and it's killing us, Butters, how did you manage?" Kyle added.

"Aw, I liked it," Butters said, sounding too apologetic.

"I'd give up everything to own a place like this," Lillian said.

"To be fair, we don't own it," Kyle told her.

"Might be nice, though," Stan added.

"We rent," Kyle concluded, "from Craig."

"Who is Craig?" Lillian asked.

"This complete asswipe," Stan told her, and then he and Kyle made both Lillian and Butters, who already knew the story, listen to the tale of Craig, Tweek, their lease, and how they'd all gone to school together long, long ago.

"It must be wonderful to have so many old school friends running around," Lillian said awkwardly at the end of the story.

"It's not so great," Stan told her.

"Except for Butters," Kyle added.

"It's not like we're friends with Craig and Tweek, I mean, it's not like we have couples' night or anything."

"Our friends just keep arresting each other." Kyle sighed. "Sometimes I wish we could move away from here."

Lillian looked to Butters for some kind of clue now, but he just shrugged and nodded in agreement, as if to verify these claims, so she said, "Well, seems nice enough to me. I don't have anyone. I moved here from Butte." Then there was silence for a few moments, until Butters told them he didn't want his job back; he just wanted to spend his weekends with Lillian, driving around the mountains, hiking. "Oh, Butters," Stan wheedled him, but it didn't work.

"I'm out of the antiques business," he announced. "The business side, anyway. Now I just want to be a customer again."

"I think we can do that," Stan said with an intent grin, happy to be back on the subject of antiques. "You're looking for a bed, right?"

"Yeah." Butters pointed at a brass-framed king in the corner, which wasn't made up, but rather, covered in wilted old crazy quilts and a couple of embroidered pillows. "That one right there," he said, stepping over to it.

"It's a beauty," Lillian said in an ethereal way. She joined Butters near the bed, and he took her by the elbow. "We just love it."

"We got that at an estate sale in Idaho," Stan told her. "I remember that day, actually."

Kyle wedged his way between Stan and the happy couple. "It was hot as balls that day, though," he recalled.

"We'll give you 2,000 dollars for it," Butters said suddenly.

"What?" Stan gasped. "Butters, no. It costs 250 bucks."

"I know," Butters said. "I did used to work here."

"But it means a lot to us," Lillian announced.

"That's the bed where we…" Butters trailed off, and he gave his fiancée a heartbreaking look. Then he caught Stan and Kyle gaping at him, and he coughed in embarrassment. "We fell in love here," he finished lamely.

"That's where you had sex?" Kyle choked. "Oh, fuck. We'll just _give_ it to you if you want it, Jesus _Christ_."

"No, no," Butters insisted. "I can't take it. It's worth a lot more to me than 250 bucks."

"It's falling apart," Stan told him.

"Seemed fine to us," Lillian added. "And we tested it, you know."

"I can't take that much money from you," Stan clarified.

"Well, that's a shame, Stan, because I can't take it for that little. It's special, you know, it's just priceless. But 2,000 is the most I can afford to give you." Kyle raised his eyebrows. "And I won't take it for free," Butters concluded.

"All right," Stan sighed. "I don't know _where_ you got that kind of money, but godammit, I believe in love. If you want it, Butters, it's yours."

"I just, you know, saved up from all those weekends I worked here."

Unable to contain her excitement, Lillian grinned like a madwoman, and clapped her hands quickly. "You guys are the greatest," she announced breathily.

Stan quickly dismissed this as he pulled out an invoice form. "We're really not."

"I just love your store," she continued, neatly ignoring him. "It just captures a mood for me, you know? The first time I came in, I knew, the person who did this, he or she _knows_ what they're doing."

"Stan knows a lot about antiques," Kyle said stupidly from the background. They all turned to look at him. "He … he loves them," he finished lamely.

"Aw, so do we," Lillian agreed. She grabbed Butters' hand again. "But there's always something you love more."

After an indulgent snicker, Kyle tightened his lips and said, "Not sure there is. You people love this crap."

"It's not crap," Butters said harshly. "It's just a reminder of a sweeter time."

"A sweeter time?" Kyle asked. "Hardly. It's a museum to the past, godammit. Tell me, how is the present supposed to compete with the past perfect?"

"Oh, verb tenses," Lillian enthused. "I remember those from grade school."

"I can't deal with this," Kyle said suddenly, and he excused himself and shut the door to his office.

Stan offered them genuine congratulations when they left, and left a couple messages with dealers in Denver. He talked with a couple of obvious lesbians who came in looking for a dining room table, no chairs. "We really only sell sets," he told them, but they took a card, and promised to come back if they changed their minds. He noticed they were wearing wedding rings. So he stopped them on the way out and asked.

"Yep," said the taller one, putting an arm around her wife's shoulders. "Just did it last week."

"It seems like everyone's getting married these days," Stan said casually, referring mostly to Butters.

But the lesbians didn't know Butters; they thought he was being specific to a very different sort of population. "We just had to rush to California," the shorter one told him.

"It's a mass movement!" the other added.

"Mass movement to California?" Stan asked, perplexed.

The taller one got a look of very judgmental lesbian scorn in her eye, and said through her obvious annoyance, "Gay marriage is legal in California now?" with a very interrogative inflection.

"It's all over the news," the shorter one added.

"I don't watch the news," Stan admitted.

"Oh," the shorter one said irritably, holding the door open for her wife. She sniffed. "Well, quit living in the past, then."

"Quit living in the past," Stan said to himself as he shuffled away from the door. He looked at the couch by the window, the closed office door. He tapped his fingernails on the glass of the counter, and wondered just why he'd never thought of it before.

XXX

It had been a slow week. A slow week that ended for Kyle in the new-usual way — spending Sunday afternoon in the office in the back of the store, teaching himself how to knit. It was kind of embarrassing, honestly, and he'd been keeping the spools of cheap, dollar-store yarn and plastic needles in the bottom drawer of the left-hand filing cabinet — the one Stan didn't have a key to. The first Saturday on the job, he tried reading, but it became apparent pretty quickly that the problem wasn't boredom; he needed something to do with his hands. This had been going on for about 10 days now, and the thing was, he hadn't actually finished this mauve atrocity; he kept undoing the rows, freeing the yarn from its knotty, disjointed imprisonment. Two steps forward, one step back. It was coming along, just not very quickly. Kyle looped scratchy strings around his pale fingers gracefully, licking his lips as he nodded along to _All Things Considered_.

He dropped a stitch. He uttered a curse. He undid the row. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Stan's distant voice regrettably permeated the door. "Kyle?"

"Yeah?" Kyle deftly used his loafer to open up his secret knitting drawer.

"Can you come out here please?"

"Um, yeah." With some luck, Kyle managed to slam the drawer shut just as Stan poked his head in.

"What are you doing in here?"

"Nothing."

"You're not, like, masturbating to NPR, are you?"

Kyle just rolled his eyes.

"Well, come on," Stan prompted. He walked away.

"Where are you going?" Kyle trailed him out of the office. Stan just gave him a curious wink, like an overeager sailor or something, and got down on the floor so that he was basically face-to-crotch with Kyle's corduroys. "What are you _doing_?"

Stan straightened out his blazer. "Can't a guy just get on the floor in the middle of his antiques store on a Sunday sometimes?"

"Get up," Kyle said tiredly. "I don't want a blow job. What are you doing?"

"I'm _not_ offering you a blow job."

"You're not? That's very rude."

"Oh, Kyle." Stan grinned. "Bitter, sardonic, wonderful Kyle. What would I do without you?"

"Well, for one thing, you'd be in horrible debt," Kyle supposed.

"I guess so," Stan agreed, producing an envelope from his back pocket. "Here." He handed it to Kyle, who looked at Stan funny, and then turned the envelope over in his hands. "Open it," Stan urged.

"Is it anthrax?" Kyle asked.

"You'll never know unless you _open it_."

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Well, here we are, you on the floor getting your pants all dirty, and me opening this stupid envelope full of anthrax…" he trailed off when he saw what was inside. "Plane tickets," he said slowly. Stan just nodded retardedly, obviously overjoyed. "From Denver to San Francisco," he added.

"You want to go?"

"Should I?"

"I'd be horribly hurt if you didn't." Stan took a deep breath. "All right, Kyle Broflovski. I've been fucking you since we were 16—"

"No, _you_ were 16, I was 15," Kyle interrupted.

"How do you remember that?"

"I remember all the unimportant little trivialities of our lives," Kyle shrugged.

"Well, all right." Stan took another deep breath, and began again: "Kyle Broflovski, I've been fucking you since I was 16 and _you_ were 15." He paused and grabbed one of Kyle's pale hands. The right one, in fact. "Do you want to come with me to San Francisco and make it legal?"

"You want to … make it legal?" Kyle squeezed his eyes shut and nearly fell to the floor. "You mean you want to—"

"Don't make me say it, please. It's too cliché. But yeah, I think we should do it."

"Really?" Kyle asked.

"Really," Stan confirmed, grabbing Kyle's forearms. "Really, really, really."

Kyle tilted his head, trying to better look into Stan's eyes. "Why?"

"Why?" Stan coughed. "You must be kidding. You've wanted to do it for so long!"

"I know, I…"

"You have to say yes, Kyle."

"What?" Kyle asked. He was beginning to tear up.

"You have to decline or accept. That's how it works."

"Oh," Kyle choked, wiping his left eye. "I accept." He cleared his throat. "Yes. I do. I want to go to California with you."

"Good."

"Oh my _God_!" Kyle exclaimed, hopping to his feet. "_Oh my fucking God!_"

"You're happy?" Stan asked, still grinning.

"Can we have a party?"

"Sure."

Kyle clapped his hands together. "Can I say, 'This is Stan, my _fiancé_?"

"If you are so inclined."

"Can I register at Crate and Barrel?"

"If that's what you want," Stan said indulgently.

"Oh my _God_!" he repeated, beginning to fan himself. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my _God_." Stan got up, and took off his blazer, and kept smiling, watching Kyle pace back and forth in front of the register. "_Stan_!" he exclaimed. "Who's going to watch the shop while we're in California?"

"Butters," Stan said simply. "He'll do it for free."

"Oh my God, _Stan._ Do you realize what this means?"

"That Craig was right all along, we're the most heteronormative fags possibly ever?"

"No, wrong. It means when we have children they won't be born out of wedlock!"

"Now I think you're getting too far ahead of yourself," Stan suggested. Kyle either didn't hear him or didn't care.

"Oh my God," Kyle repeated again, now fanning himself, pacing, and beaming like an idiot. Suddenly he stopped, and smacked his hands on the counter. "I have to go call my mom!" he cried, turning to run back to his office and do just that.

Stan caught Kyle's wrist. "Let me go," he said airily. "I need to go call Mom."

"No, just wait a minute." Stan pulled Kyle in and wrapped his arms around his excited fiancée. Stan could hear and feel Kyle's heart pounding, heavy and fast, like he hadn't heard it pounding for a very long time. "Don't you want to know where I got the money for this?" Stan asked, voice low and deep.

Kyle swallowed. "Okay." He put his arms around Stan's neck. "Tell me, Stan. Where'd you get the money to take a trip to San Francisco?"

"Well, Kyle, that's an interesting question." He pulled Kyle in a little closer, but only a bit — they were pretty much already in each other's faces. "I got it from my dad," Stan said huskily. "I told him I wanted to take my longtime gay lover to San Francisco to get gay married, because we're gay." There was a moment of silence between them, and Kyle felt Stan's moist breath on his lips, and for just a second or two their hearts beat in sync, and nothing further needed to be said. "And he was so happy for us," Stan continued after the moment had passed. "He just wrote me a check."

Kyle took a deep, deep breath, and exhaled his boyfriend's — no, his _fiancé_'s name. And with tears stinging his eyes again, he finally had no words. So he did the only thing he thought could fill the silence: He brought his lips to Stan's, and kissed him wetly, like he did when they were 15.

In the resulting bout of sweet, vanilla lovemaking, they accidentally knocked a crystal lemonade pitcher off of a console. It was actually quite valuable — Victorian, ca. 1879, clear etching, purchased from a dusty garage sale off the side of the road near Missoula one summer. As it happened, Kyle did not care that this pitcher would have retailed for 160 dollars — there were some things that were more important to him than money. And likewise, Stan did not care that he'd busted a most important piece of English aristocratic history, because the man he was holding in the aftermath of the destruction meant more to him than some fusty old piece of junk.

* * *

End note: All right, guys. That's the story.

If you liked this, feel free to vote for it in **Foodstamp**'s contest. You have to send her a note on DeviantArt, where her handle is **Imaginaaation**. No, I don't have any freaking clue how to make links on this site. While you're over there, check out the other entries -- in the spirit of diplomacy I won't get detailed, but you should read them anyway.


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